Always Smiling and Never Admitted a Single Mistake

My journey is finally over and if there’s any advice I could give anyone looking at Dr. Rice, it’s to go to him for basic procedures but to steer clear of any major surgeries. Dr. Rice was always kind and positive with me, but unfortunately this meant he was not forthcoming in the many mistakes made during my rhinoplasty. I had not one but four different complications to my nose job. Not one was acknowledged by Dr. Rice.
I should have known something was wrong when Dr. Rice was silent when my bandage was removed from my nose. He just looked at me, no smiles, no comments and then asked if I’d like to see my nose. It took me going to two different surgeons and a simple glance in the mirror to find out what went wrong.
Pollybeak deformity - immediately after my bandage was removed my tip looked larger, upturned, and more bulbous. You know something’s off when your teenager says, “geez mom, I think he made your nose bigger.” He shortened my septum too much and left me with much more nostril show. This is a common complication with rhinoplasty but Dr. Rice tried to tell me at my follow up visits that this was scar tissue built up at the tip. As I timidly scrolled back on his ipad to my very first photo from the cast removal and showed him the hump (“pollybeak”) was there from the cast removal, he said, “I see that”. That day I went home and noticed all the photos of my profile from the first two weeks have been deleted from my TouchMD account. I’ll let you figure that one out.
Inverted V deformity - immediately after surgery there seemed to be a divot on one side of my nose. I assumed it was swelling and was told over and over again by Dr. Rice that I had “three dimensional swelling” and would need to be patient as I healed. This divot increased to a horizontal crease across the lower third of my nose, when I pointed it out to Dr. Rice, he didn't see it. But instead pulled out a photo of what my nose looked like immediately after surgery, while I was still sedated mind you. This deformity happens when the nose is not supported as it’s healing and when a hump removal is too aggressive. When I walked into another surgeons office he* pointed it out immediately. Ah, I wasn’t going crazy.
Deviated Septum/increased difficulty breathing. During cast removal, Dr. Rice asked me if I could breathe out of both sides of my nose. One side was perfect and the other side...strange, I couldn’t breathe out of it. I told him I must be congested. Looking back, as he was the ENT, he should have investigated further, but he took my word for it. When I later pointed out that I was continuing to have difficulty breathing out of my nostrils, one side was either completely clogged or both sides were stuffy, noisy breathing, and I had started snoring for the first time in my life, Dr. Rice gave me a pretty intense lesson on nasal turbinates. Never was there any acknowledgement that this might be a complication to rhinoplasty.
Open roof deformity- I don’t look like myself in photos. It’s crazy what a flat nose does to change the eyes and the front of the face in photos. My bridge is flat across the top. I’m assuming this is from the hump removal and has something to do with the inverted V deformity above.
All of these complications above are common complications to rhinoplasty. It’s a complex surgery. I wouldn’t be writing this review if Dr. Rice had simply acknowledged, “Your surgery did not go as intended and it looks like you have several complications that I’d like to refer you to another surgeon to have addressed.” HOWEVER, I will add, the methods Dr. Rice uses for Rhinoplasty are what my current surgeon calls, “old school”.
We women put ourselves into the care of a physician trusting their expertise and hoping for a boost to our self confidence. Dr. Rice deleting my profile photos from TouchMD was the point that I realized he was lying to me about his role in the outcome of my face and the way I was healing and I needed to go to another physician.
I have since found another surgeon who has completed my revision - the surgery was much more complex and four times more expensive, and yet on day six, I was able to put makeup on and join the real world. Something I couldn’t do for several weeks after my initial surgery with Dr. Rice (and my family would argue - something I didn’t do all last year as my face was obviously “not right”). Revision is supposed to be more down time, more swelling, but I’ve found the exact opposite to be true.

This photo was exactly eight months to the day. Swelling was down and I kept taking photos trying to figure out what was wrong with my nose. Another confirmed that this was a classic pollybeak deformity.