Donna: I’m here because in ’83 I had plastic surgery. What he did was he gouged out a tremendous amount of cartilage where there’s literally nothing protecting the airway passage.
Dr. Nassif: Donna is a sweet sweet lady. She originally came to see me in 2007. She was unhappy with the form of her nose because she has thick skin and the previous surgery excised a lot of the cartilage.
Donna: Dr. Nassif is going to take some root cartilage and give me more protection across the entire bridge of my nose and also re-sculpt the tip of the nose. I’m twenty minutes away from having surgery. I’m very excited; I believe it’s going to be just fine.
Dr. Nassif: The goal of the surgery was functional to help with her breathing and additionally cosmetically to give it more structure and make it look better. We initially took rib cartilage and repair chondrium harvest. So we had enough cartilage for me to rebuild her nose. She underwent an open rhinoplasty where I reconstructed the entire tip of the nose by placing a shield graft in all the structural parts of the rhinoplasty that we needed for tip function and also to open up her airway. We also augmented her dorsum, her profile, did a revision septoplasty. When I completed Donna’s surgery I felt fantastic. Our next hurdle is the healing process.
Donna: Hi, how are you?
Dr. Nassif: It’s been about eight months since Donna’s surgery, her nose is healing well and her profile looks fantastic.
Donna: I’m very happy with my results it looks like something I was born with. The first month of course I was very cautious about anybody close to my face and the swelling gradually started to go down. I started seeing my nose actually start to take the shape that it is now. Breathing is one hundred percent better.
Dr. Nassif: It’s nice and symmetric.
Donna: Isn’t it though? It feels fantastic.
Dr. Nassif: I did tell Donna that it may take one to two years to get the final result depending on how the healing goes with her thick skin.
Donna: What I’ m most happy about is that I have a tremendous amount of protection over the bridge area which I did not have any whatsoever. It’s not tender at all and there are no issues with it whatsoever. I am a makeup artist in the motion picture and television industry and if you’re not happy with the way that you look it really reflects in everything. When I look at myself now and I see that my nose is straight, it really has made my self-confidence much better.
Dr. Nassif: I’m extremely happy with her preliminary results and I hope with my continued visits that her nose keeps getting better and better and better.
Donna: It is a constant reminder when I look in the mirror that I made the right decision, that I had the right doctor. It gives me, you know, confidence throughout the day whether I’m wearing makeup or whether I’m not wearing makeup I feel confident in the way that I look.
