21 yr old hispanic female rhinoplasty, great experience so far (5 months progress with photos)

I love waking up to my nose every day! Whenever I put makeup on or try to look nice for something, I thank myself over and over again for getting this procedure done. I no longer worry and get anxiety attacks whenever people look at me from the side, or worry about pictures being taken of me from the side (I actually love it now because my nose is now my best feature, haha!) There are some days when my nose is swollen that I don't particularly love it, but it's still way better than my old nose. Looking at my old nose now makes me shudder and makes me seriously wish I had done it sooner.

I've been getting questions about whether or not I got my dream nose, and I have two responses to that:
1. Yes, absolutely! On some days, it looks somewhat bleh because it's swollen so it doesn't really have a defined shape, but on days when I watch my diet and it doesn't swell up, it's way better than what I expected.

2. Don't spend so much time overthinking exactly how you want your nose to look. Honestly, my nose doesn't always look the same but I don't even think about. It's the freedom of not having a huge ugly-looking nose and the freedom from the anxiety that comes with that that's made the big difference in my life. I spent so much time pre-surgery making sure I could find a surgeon that would give me the exact nose I wanted and figuring out the exact shape that would best fit my face, but looking back it's not really the shape at all that matters. Nobody pays attention to the exact shape of your nose, and neither will you. I honestly just love looking in the mirror and having a normal shaped and sized nose and don't really give a second thought to "is it straight, is it curved, does it have a supra tip break, is it exactly like (blank) celebrity's nose..." Once you have a normal nose, you'll become like everyone else like a normal nose and not even think about what it means to have a "dream nose."

Who do you know with a normal nose who really thinks about what their dream nose would be? What I've learned is that people don't even pay attention to noses-- nobody has even noticed my nose job until I've pointed it out!

It's been a little over a month already, wow! I am really loving my nose and am starting the see the supra tip break that Dr. Elam had mentioned in my pre-op. The tip, especially the sides of the tip, are still very swollen (I can tell because the tip is very hard). However, I already love the appearance of it.

One issue that's kind of scaring me is that on the very top of the bridge next to my left eye, I can feel a little bump. One of the nurse's had mentioned during my pre-op that in rare cases the bone will grow back, leaving small bumps, which Dr. Elam could easily fix. I really hope that's not what's happening here. A similar thing had happened earlier on on the right side and now that is very smooth with no bumps, so I'm just going to keep doing the compression exercises and hope it goes down. Thankfully it's not actually visible at all.

I also think I look weird when I smile, but that's probably due to the numbness that makes my smile feel kind of forced, and also due to not being used to seeing my nostrils from the front when I smile. I'm sure this will also get better with time.

Overall, I am so so glad I did this. I keep on looking back at before pictures and it is honestly painful to think that was me. A lot of people tried convincing me that I didn't need a nose job and that my nose was fine, but looking back now it is a huge difference and I feel like I have the nose that I was supposed to be born with. I'm so happy with it and my confidence has improved a lot. My nose is no longer something that I think about when out socializing or when people are looking at me from the side, which used to get to me a lot.