38 Years Old Upper Eyelid Surgery and Closed Rhinoplasty

I'm 38 years old and what they call a bruiser.I have had hooded eyes my entire life and a slight bump on my nose. I figured rather than wait ten years for the eyelids to get really bad I would do everything together. I toyed with the idea of doing lip filers at the same time but I thought it might be too much change at once. I'm going to put my final review of the surgeon and procedure in a couple of weeks but I thought I'd document the recovery because I know that I spent ages searching this site looking for recovery timelines!

I saw several doctors but in the end I went with Dr Robert Schwarcz, who came highly recommended from a friend in the industry, has won a bunch of awards, and who refused to do anything unnatural to my face. Some doctors I had consultations with seemed a bit scalpel happy and I'm not generally unhappy with how I look.

I had three visits with Dr. Schwarcz before surgery including one appointment for fillers (restylene) in my marionette lines. I was really impressed that he wanted to stop after one syringe because he thought I didn't need it. It would have been really easy for him to make an extra $750 but he doesn't like to do unnecessary or unnatural work.

I finally took the plunge yesterday (January 9th 2017) because i have nearly three weeks before I have to go back to work.

Day of Surgery: I went into surgery around 9:30am. He drew on my face with a marker where he would remove the dorsal hump and the excess skin from my upper eyelids. The surgery took about 90 minutes. When I came to I had redness around my eyes from the incision marks and a cast on my nose. No initial pain because of the drugs. My nose was also stuffed with a gauzy substance to collect the bleeding.

My boyfriend took my home about two hours later. The worst part of the first day and night was the congestion from having to breathe through my mouth and the pressure from the gauze. I had a closed surgery with no tip work or much of anything done to the bridge. He shaved the nose and broke it on both sides to push it together. I'm in awe of how strong the rest of you are for putting up with a week or padding inside your nose congestion.

Day 1: I pulled the gauze out this morning which was disgusting.But so much better to bruise. I have quite a lot of swelling, bruising, and puffiness around my eyes.But I expected this because I had bruises for two weeks after getting belotero under my eyes. I also found that one of the stitches was scratching my eyeball. Ever had an eyelash stuck in your eye? It was like that but a bit more stabby. It was driving me nuts so I called the Doctor's office and I went in and he snipped it. Nothing like a pair of scissors by your eye to remind you why you want anesthesia.

I'm taking percoset (for pain), zofran (for nausea from percoset), Arnica and bromelain, a prednisone based steroid for swelling, an antibiotic ointment for my eyes, and Keflex (an oral antibiotic).

So far so good, when I went to have the stitch snipped he said I am doing really well for one day out. Note to anyone reading this and thinking about eyelid surgery: Much of the bruising in my pictures is from the rhinoplasty.

You know how there are people who don't have too much bruising? Or they have some but by Day 4 it's starting to subside? That's not me, my face is like a sunset. Blue/Black, Purple, Red and only sparse amounts of Yellow. I guess I'll be experimenting with color correcting makeup.

On the plus side, even though there are ugly black stitches and purple bruises all around my eyes I already love the results of the eyelid surgery. I only hope that my nose looks as good.

Bear in mind that a lot of the bruising is from the Rhinoplasty