This time last year I took one last look at my old nose. We’d had some great times together, and we could have had more, but alas, it was time for a change. My nose was so much apart of me; I was in no way defined by it but let’s just say I had gotten to a point after chronically being online and looking at myself (this is a huge part of being a beauty editor, by the way) that I had grown tired of having to angle my phone in such a way to get the smallest, perceived version.
So, on August 20th, 2025, I had a rhinoplasty performed by Chicago and New York facial plastic surgeon Anil Shah, MD. It took me some time to find him; if you’re unfamiliar with plastic surgery consultations, you don’t want to just choose anyone: you want to be comfortable with them and, most importantly, trust their expertise and previous surgical results on other patients. To say the least, Dr. Shah felt like the perfect fit for me; like any great relationship, he listened to what I wanted, communicated well and was very empathetic to the journey I was about to endure. I was also excited that he would be fixing my deviated septum that had made breathing through my left nostril a nuisance.
Come surgery day, I looked in the mirror, touched my nose one last time, and said goodbye. The next thing I remember was waking up under a red LED light (to help with healing), with Dr. Shah sitting next to me, telling me I did a great job and asking if I wanted to see a picture of my nose right before he placed the cast on it. Still very groggy, I emphatically said ‘yes.’ I looked at my new nose, and even though I was still a little out of it, I gasped and said, “It’s perfect.”
In the days following my surgery, I followed all of Dr. Shah’s post-care instructions. And after a little over a week post-surgery, judgment day arrived; it was time for him to remove the cast from my nose that had become the bane of my existence; itchy doesn’t even begin to describe it.
As he began to slowly remove the cast from my nose and pull the splints out of my nostrils that I didn’t even know were there, I remembered that many had told me that upon seeing my nose for the first time since surgery, I would most likely be in a state of shock. And so, as I looked at my nose from every angle in a small hand mirror, I smiled but held back tears. Not because he didn’t do a great job with my nose, but because both my nose and I looked so…different.
Over the next few months, my nose settled, and I started to truly appreciate how much better my face looked. However, around the three-month mark, my nose started to go through a weird period. It began to look a little off-kilter, and residual swelling contributed to the perfect storm of weirdness. By the six- to seven-month mark, the swelling really started to dissipate, and I finally loved the way it looked in pictures.
Fast forward to today, and while I wouldn’t say my life has changed per se, I’m so much happier when I look in the mirror, or when a candid photo is taken of me—my nose fits my face and the idea of a “bad angle” has completely disappeared from my lexicon.
I never imagined that I would actually go through with the surgery until one day I just did. Friends and acquaintances started to come out of the woodwork when I began posting on social media about my surgical journey. They were not only incredibly happy for me (and extremely complimentary), but they confirmed that their own rhinoplasties were quite literally the best thing they ever did for themselves. It is certainly the best thing I have ever done for myself—and I would go through it all over again to get these results.
