Tip Plasty with Temporal Fascia Grafting with Daily Journal

I think it's time to wrap this one up.

In the end, I'm changing the review to "worth it" because I think Dr. Young did his job.

However, I will personally have to decide if such a subtle change was worth living with a lifelong skin condition. For the most part, I can control the flare-ups, but stress is another factor that's harder to control than diet.

When flares happen, I have to use a prescription cream on my nose, and who knows what that's doing to my skin long-term. Plus, the medication is another thing to keep up with. I forgot my perspective on a recent vacation, had a flare, and spent a week with an inflamed and itchy nose.

If you have any sort of notion that you have sensitive skin around your nose, please consider this possibility. In hindsight, I should have known as certain products I used in the past would cause itching around the folds of my nose. I made the situation worse by having surgery.

However, my nose works great. I like the way it looks 95% of the time, which is better than before, and there are some angles that are really great.

My final thought is this: If I did decide to do it all again, I would go all in. My hope in choosing a subtle change (without breaking the nose) was that I would have a faster, easier recovery, but I don't think that was the case.

It's so crazy to think that at the eight-month mark, things finally seem to be getting better. The healing process for this surgery is slow.

My nose has definitely changed, for the better. It's still slightly stiff in areas so I'm hopeful it has even more healing to go.

My nose is very functional. No pain. I can breathe.

The skin around my nose is still an issue, but getting better. I ended up going to my derm who said I now have Seborrheic Dermatitis which is a form of eczema. I think the stress of the surgery triggered it. I don't think the surgery caused it. If that makes sense? The best thing I've found for it is Aquafor Healing Ointment Advanced Therapy combined with a dairy, sugar, gluten, and soy free diet. I also cut out coffee, chocolate, and bell peppers. I miss cheese and chocolate, but my skin is so much better after taking these extreme steps.

I forgot to mention last time that I received an extra bill from the OR as the surgery ran long. Apparently, I was under for over five hours, which is wild. I’ve updated the cost of the procedure to include the new charges.

As far as everything else, I’m trying. The positive is that the stitch that was poking out finally fell out on February 18th (four months post op on the dot).

I feel like that day was a turning point in my healing. My skin was still flaking and red a little, but it was looking better, the numbness was resolving even more, and my nose was a little softer although touching the very top of the tip still felt hard like bone. I feel like month four is where I expected to be at month three. Though I still was/am avoiding pictures and well lit mirrors in the name of my personal sanity.

Fast forward to today, and things haven’t changed a whole lot this past month. My nose isn’t as red but it still looks like my nose has dandruff. It’s always white and flaky. I’m including a before and after close up and though it’s not a high def photo, you can see some of the flaking in the photo.

As far as how it looks overall, I think the tip looks weird when I smile, which is what I’m doing in this pic. I actually think it looks pretty good when I’m not smiling, but when I do, it gets kind of pinched and there is a hump on the top of one side which you can see in the picture on the left side of the nose. I prefer the straight lines of my old nose when smiling but I think my new nose looks better when I’m not smiling. Overall, the front view change is more than I wanted and more than the computer generated before and after after, but I also know that I’m only one third of the way through the healing process. For now, I’m being patient and loving on myself.