I finally am having my surgery next monday!

Ever since I was little, I've always felt that something looked off about my face, but at a young age I couldn't tell what it was. In middle school, I began to feel super self conscious of my forehead. I used to get a teased sometimes, but ultimately my forehead was something I never liked myself, not just because other people had made comments about it. Starting in 7th grade, I started wearing hairstyles to cover it, and having really bad anxiety on windy days or if I was invited to a pool party/water park. I wore hats whenever it was going to be windy. I stopped going swimming, something I used to love since I had a pool growing up. I also stopped going boating with my best friend, always making up excuses of why I couldn't go. Boating with her was my favorite thing in the world, but the anxiety I had developed about my forehead overruled that enjoyment. In 8th grade, I stumbled across this surgery when looking up that frequent search, "how to make your forehead look smaller" lol. Ever since then I spent hours doing research and planning to save up money for it. After I bought my first car, I began saving all my money from babysitting, and also got a job at 16. I am now about to graduate this week and finally am having my surgery next monday! I am super excited to finally have this weight lifted off my shoulders, but also a little nervous! However, I trust that Dr. Dudas knows what he's doing and will do great!

Sorry it’s taken me a few days to be able to be on my phone, but i’ll post a separate review for each day. My surgery was at 7:40 AM and I woke up about 3 hours later. Going into surgery, the nurses were super sweet and when they took off my mask, they said that I was so beautiful and this surgery was only going to make me prettier than I already am. When they put me under, I remember the lights above the operation table warping for a second before I fell asleep. I don’t remember anything until I woke up. When I first woke up from anesthesia, it was superrr hard like my brain wanted to wake up but my body couldn’t. After about 10 min or so I could finally function. I didn’t feel any pain in my head yet, the local anesthesia hadn’t worn off yet. I was worried when I couldn’t move my eyebrows, but later on I realized it was just from the anesthesia and I am able to feel/move them now. I was also very swollen the first day. They prescribed me with anti nausea meds and oxycodone for the pain. I ended up throwing up three times that day because my stomach couldn’t handle the pain meds. By about 8:45 PM the pain had gotten excruciating and I couldn’t do anything but cry and try to control my breathing. My mom had to call my doctors 24 hour number (which they were super helpful the whole day), and my surgeon called her back shortly. He said that I was heavily under medicated from throwing up so much, and basically feeling all of the pain from the procedure. He gave me permission to take more of the pain medication and some ibuprofen. This helped enough to whereI could breath normally again and fall asleep for short periods of time.

Last night I had only been sleeping in about hour intervals, and was extremely weak. My mom had to basically carry me to the bathroom all yesterday and this morning. My checkup appointment was at 12, so in the morning she helped me wash off in the bath and I was also able to brush my teeth. My head was throbbing but not awful. However, my nausea was still bad. Since my doctor is in SF we had to park somewhat far and I had to walk to the office with my moms help. This made my nausea even worse and I ended up throwing up again in the bathroom of the doctors office. I did get to see my incision finally though, which looked clean and like it will heal nicely. Dr Dudas also showed my mom how to care for my incision, since I was so out of it from the meds. We decided it would be best for me to stop taking the pain meds and switch to just tylenol and ibuprofen. One of the nurses wheeled me in a wheelchair back out to my car which was very helpful. I had about a 2 hour drive home which was completely awful. If you’re traveling to have this procedure do yourself a favor and stay at least an extra night in the hotel. I spent the whole two hours trying not to throw up and manage my pain. When I got home and laid in bed the nausea began to get better. I couldn’t do much but get up to go to the bathroom, in which my head would start throbbing. My boyfriend came over for a few hours and laid with me as I tried to get some sleep. The most difficult part of sleeping was staying elevated. I always sleep in fetal position so this was extremely hard, and I ended up turning to my side to fall asleep. The pain was still pretty bad day 2 since I stopped taking the prescribed pain pills, but ultimately that was what was best for my body.