(Excerpted from Dr. Peter Adamson’s book Fabulous Faces (available on Amazon.com) and edited for our blog.)
Everyone interested in rhinoplasty wants to know what will happen, how to prepare and what to expect. Thankfully Brad, one of my Toronto rhinoplasty patients, agreed to share his “an almost perfectly normal boy’s journal.” See our last post for Chapter 1. Here we present Chapters 2 and 3.
Chapter 2
I Got Shafted!
I’m seventeen and make my first appointment with a Toronto cosmetic surgeon. I can’t afford any procedures but am interested in learning more about what can be done and how much it will cost. Yeah, it’s going to be expensive, but one day … I hope.
By the time I’m twenty, I’m six feet tall and weigh just 130 pounds. Beyond that, I still have major acne problems. Add to that a long nose that veers off to the left as if it had been broken in a fight, and you get the picture. What the heck happened to genetics? The rest of my family is picture-perfect. I got shafted!
Girlfriends are few and far between. But one day, I strike gold—or so I think. She’s a tall, traffic-stopping blonde with a Barbie doll figure. And she wants me! I have to say the relationship is purely physical. We aren’t the best match, and, frankly, she’s driving me into the poorhouse. Did I mention that she’s an exotic dancer? I believe now that my poor body image kept me hanging onto the relationship far longer than I should have. After all, she was genuinely physically attracted to me, and girls like her don’t normally date guys like me.
Fortunately, the relationship ends after a couple of years. So here I am, single again, mid-twenties, skinny as a rail, acne, blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard it all before. I decide to concentrate on improving my self-image, saving some money, accomplishing some goals, lifting some weights and, I hope, growing out of my acne.
Chapter 3
Now It’s My Chin
With the age of thirty quickly approaching, I’m feeling better about myself in general. I’d definitely excelled in some areas of my life and had a lot to be proud of. But I’m watching friends get married and realizing that being single really stinks. I still get the occasional zit, but nothing I can’t contend with. I’m a little heavier but not exactly where I want to be in that department. As for my nose, well, it’s still undeniably large and crooked. If that isn’t enough, I now begin to notice something else—my chin. I guess because I wear a goatee and rarely see myself well from the side, I never realized how underdeveloped my chin is. I had noticed it before but never fully realized the impact it had on my overall appearance. In fact, I’m now sure my chin is only amplifying the issues with my nose. What next?
I enjoy watching educational channels on TV. I see a show on human attraction and realize how some women must feel, being bombarded with images of impossible-to-achieve female figures. I’m sitting here watching how I’m basically the opposite of what biologically attracts a woman to a man—muscle development, left-to-right symmetry, strong jawline. Interesting as these shows are, I find them damaging to my body image and self-esteem. I’m the most self-conscious about my appearance that I’ve ever been.
I research rhinoplasty and chin augmentation on the Internet. I learn that a crooked nose is one of the most difficult things to fix and can rarely be corrected 100 percent.
I’m thinking about this as my family’s big summer barbeque approaches. Children are present, young eight- to ten-year-olds who can be painfully truthful. One of them tells me, pointedly, that my nose looks like a witch’s nose— not just any witch’s nose, but the nose of the witch in the new Harry Potter movie. That’s it! I decide then and there that I will get surgery as soon as possible.