Each clinic has probably different procedure, I was in Institute of Aesthetic Medicine – Emauzy and I had a recommendation for a great surgeon Dušan Záruba, M.D.

At first you book a consultation via e-mail or phone, it costs 300, - CZK, the secretary will inform you about the price and so on. A consultation with the surgeon follows, he will explain you what can be done with your nose and what does it involve. After that you can set the date of your surgery with the secretary (I wanted it in five months, but I think that it is possible even within a month). You come to a pre-surgical examination usually one to three days before the surgery, at that time 50% of the payment should be paid. It cost me 29.000 CZK (it was a procedure into soft tissue as well as to the bone).

Pre-surgical examination

Usually at 8:30 in the morning you have to bring a sample of your urine and arrive fasting. Your blood will be taken and then you will be checked by the surgeon. Your weight will be measured in the underwear, your heart will be monitored and he will check the kidneys, he will ask you also about diseases in the family. The whole examination takes maximum 1, 5 hours.

The day of the surgery

7.30 the admission to the clinic – I changed in the cloakroom to underwear and green hospital shirt. You leave the clothes in the cloakroom and take only the things you need with you to the room.

8.00 the admission to in-patient department

8.30 the doctor’s round, a consultation with my surgeon about what is he going to do with my nose

9.00 a conversation with the anesthesiologist (about the anesthesia)

10.00 an injection in the buttocks – it will numb you (I slept after that and it was also the only pain that you felt during the whole surgery)

11.00 leaving for the operating room (only 5 meters across the hall)

12 -12.30 the awakening in the room – no pain, still connected to the infusion pump, which you don’t feel (I am afraid of needles), it stays until approximately 4 p.m. I put immediately music in my ears. A had a plaster on the nose, nasal packing and eye compresses. In general I felt comfortably tired. I had dried mouth, you can only cleanse the mouth at the beginning (because of emesis), you can drink with straw later. The nurse changed the eye compresses about every hour and she gave me a drink. You cannot get up by your own until the next morning, you call the nurse.

During approximately 4 to5 hours after the surgery, my eyes and the whole face swelled and the eyes turned blue. I had no pain though and the nurse was looking after the compresses. I had a little nosebleed at night but it ceased immediately.

I received sleeping pills, so I slept like a log. The eyes were so swollen in the morning so that I could not even walk; the nurse helped me to go to the toilet.

The next day – the morning after the surgery

The next day after the surgery – the morning

Do not dread, I didn’t feel the swelling. I was still little numbed so I thought that I don’t see anything because of the compresses!! :-)

The nurse woke me up around 7.00 and brought me the breakfast. I could not open my mouth because of the swelling and tamponade so I just drank some tea with a straw. At 7.30 I went to the cloak room where I changed my clothes and waited for the surgeon to check me up. He checked the plaster and sent me home.

It is good to have somebody to drive you home around 7.30 or you can take a taxi like me. They can call one for you in the reception, the taxi drivers are used to take patients so they do not ask anything.

The third day

The third day in the morning

My eyes are still little bit swollen, it is possible to read (although very shortly) and I also made a small walk. You can eat, but only food that you don’t have to bite – it is still impossible to open your mouth. The swellings disappear already in the afternoon.

The fourth day

The fourth day in the morning

At 8.00 in the morning I went to a check up for tamponade removal (it doesn’t hurt, it resembles blowing the nose) and then I made a walk.

You will clean the nose every 2 hours with the cotton brushes. The bruises under the eyes (and the whole face) began to color up, and they are green and yellow now, the eyes are sensitive. The eye swellings disappeared completely in the evening, only the cheeks are swollen. It is enough to ice it every two hours now.

The fifth day

The fifth day in the morning

The bruises are green and the nose began to itch under the plaster. Now I have just noticed how swelled my cheeks are and the bruises spread to the edge of the lower jaw.

The seventh day

The seventh day in the morning

I am afraid of pain and I today I will have one suture taken out. The whole surgery was made with closed method so I won’t have any scars (I think that even if there was the scar it should anyway disappear within a month).

The seventh day – after the suture removal

I look nice like this after the suture removal. Each nostril has a different size and the nose is turning to the right, but is is caused by the crusts and swellings.

Other sutures are absorbed and they will fall out in 2 to 3 weeks stepwise during the cleaning – white small threads. I do not have to ice my nose anymore.

Don’t be confused, the bruises did not disappear since morning, it is just a make-up :-)

The 15th day PLASTER REMOVAL

The 15th day – after the plaster removal

So today I have the plaster taken off and I just have such a tape. At this time it is already possible to go to work. I still have very bloody eyes, although it should not be common. The nose is still swollen, but it is visible how nice it will look like :-) They cut it approximately of 4 mm!!! The surgeon showed me how to massage the nose. It is something like pressure massage, it should prevent from scar hardening. It takes only around 10 seconds four times a day.

One month after the surgery

I heard that quite a lot people have depressions after the surgery. I can understand why because I had one such day, when I looked 20 times in the mirror to check if everything is alright. And you can find some little errors, such as that the nose tip was pointed up, although this is caused by swellings and crusts. So do not panic, everything will be alright. After the plaster removal, the nose became very sensitive to touch.

My nose looks the same since this time, so you can theoretically count on almost stable appearance since the seventh week after the surgery (sometimes it may last 3 months, final stabilization until 12 months.)

9 weeks after the surgery

Today it is 9 weeks from the surgery. My nose is not swollen anymore, since 3 or 4 weeks I go to the gym and I have no swellings or pain. The nose hurts when I do the pressure massages. The surgeon said that it takes about 3 months to stabilize.

4 months after the surgery

The surgeon told me that the nose looks nice so I don’t have to do the massages anymore. I do everything as normal; nose does not hurt and looks very nice. The only thing that stayed after the surgery is some scars inside the nose. They will stay there forever; you can feel it just while cleaning the nose.

5 months after the surgery

The nose tip – a week after the plaster removal

The nose tip has fallen – 5 months after the surgery

Three months after the surgery, my nose tip was pointed up. They have told me that the nose will round off and the tip will “fall”. And so it did. I was not sure for about a week if it looks good, but now I think it does.

Finally some useful tips:

What is good to have prepared before the surgery:

3 gel compresses (you will change them every hour, so to let them ice), at least four packages of ice, 3 packages of cotton brushes to clean the nose with, MIRACLEAN zinc emulsion (it fastens the healing process), straw to drink, a cap (your eyes will be very sensitive to the sun for the first days), pills ASCORUTIN – it should help to harden the chapped vessels (it is not worthy to buy a cream against bruises because it is not recommended for face anyway) or Wobenzym, I heard just positive evaluation during last days (http://www.wobenzym.cz) – it should prevent swellings. If you have irritated larynx from intubation, like me, try herbal candy called SALVIA (in drug-store), it helped me a lot.