Chin Augmentation/Buccal

Hello,

At the start of January 2019 I arrived at Newport Beach for a scheduled surgery for chin augmentation and buccal fat removal. I was seeking more definition in my jawline, projection for my chin, and a significant reduction of mass in my cheeks.

Hey,

So little pain on the day of surgery which was honestly surprising to me. There was some minor pain later in the night, but honestly the worst thing was some nausea that hit me later on. Drinking some homemade broth helped, but honestly I spent most of this day napping.

Advice: Make sure you have something in your stomach a few hours after you come out of surgery. You won’t be able to open your mouth that wide afterwards and Sodium increases swelling so it’s best to avoid that for the first week of recovery. It also shouldn’t have surprised me, but I wasn’t allowed to brush my teeth a few days after surgery so I would really recommend having some good mouthwash ready for those days.

So the morning after check up was on Saturday and it was fairly direct and short; basically those white bandages were to stay on until Monday morning and weren’t allowed to get wet (so no baths or showers until Monday).

•Chin Implant: I had the incision for the chin implant down externally, so the stitches were still present. The plan was to remove them the following week for my week post-op checkup. Honestly no pain or real need for pain medication for this implant. My main source of annoyance was just that the absolute numbness caused a bit of a lisps. The lack of sensation meant no pain, but also poor control of my lips. If I had to describe it I would compare it to like the first hour after a dentist that numbed you up for a filler. Yeah that kind of level of numb for this first few days following the surgery.

•Buccal Fat Removal: As for the buccal fat those incisions were dissolvable but felt very irritated. I’ve seen so many videos of the procedure making it look like the stitches would be located in the back center of the inner cheek, but mine were high up near where the incisors are (***The sutures were a stitch or two in the crease where the gum meets the flesh of the upper lip). The buccal fat removal was highly obnoxious to get used to. The cheek was a bit sore but not bad; more of a bruise like ache when touched than outright pain. The swelling of the cheeks wasn’t as bad as some people I’ve seen before and nowhere near as bad as when I got my wisdom teeth done, but it was still very obvious.

Advice: Micheal Elam’s office was kind enough to provide the black head-wrap seen in pictures. Inside that wrap are slits that hold a small ice pack on each side. These made the entire process infinity easier and if you plan to go somewhere else I would still highly recommend a wrap like this for your healing and comfort! Due to the swelling and sensitivity from the buccal fat stitches I would still recommend something like soup.