Rhinoplasty Advice????

[tara121]

I'm booked to have rhinoplasty in August 2020 but I'm having serious panic attacks just thinking about it. I want it done soooooo bad and I know that I'll be so happy when it's over. I hope that I'll think that all the pain was worth it but I'm still so scared. I'm not even good with blood tests (I'm a fainter) and I've never had surgery before. Also I'm a long term smoker and the surgeon has instructed me to quit at least 2 weeks prior and for 2 weeks after so my "security blanket" is being taken from me at the time when I need it the most you could say.......does anyone have any advice? Ways I can prepare myself? What to expect pain/recovery wise? Anyone whose really not good with doctors/hospitals/blood/needles etc who has managed to get through rhinoplasty who can advise me? Thanks in advance.

[Sam W]

Hi tara,

Rhinoplasty is a bit outside the scope of what we cover on the boards, but we can definitely talk with you about ways to address some of the concerns you're having. For instance, have you spoken with the healthcare provider who will be doing the surgery about what to expect in terms of recovery, or ways you can prepare yourself for the procedure?

[Heather]

I can't talk with you/help you specifically about Rhinoplasty, but in order to have a spinal surgery so I could walk again, I had to quit a 35-ish year-long big smoking habit -- just past my 3 year quit anniversary -- so I can help you out some with that, if you'd like.

[tara121]

Yes please Heather! Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Heather]

Sure thing. Quitting smoking is *hard.*

I think one piece of good news is that it gets harder the longer you've done it for, so if you haven't smoked for 35 years, it will at least be easier for you! I also couldn't do many of the things that help me cope when I'm not smoking (like being able to walk or work out) while was quitting, and hopefully you don't have the same limitations.

I found most apps for quitting really useless, and some just ridiculous: like, don't congratulate me for not smoking for a week, congratulate me for not throwing anything through a window in the process! That said, there was one UK-based app I did find very helpful, and that's this one: https://smokefreeapp.com/

My process, if it helps to know, was to literally do EVERYTHING I could and could afford to do that could also be done together. It basically looked like this:
1) Taper down one smoke each day or so (I was a pack a day smoker, roughly) until I was at three-five smokes a day. What I did each day was take as many smokes as I needed to out of the pack for that day (so, if I was down to only smoking 12 a day, I took out 8 so there were only twelve, which made it easier for me to see how many left there were to smoke, much like you do when you know the shop won't be open to buy more smokes all night, and you're down to three, so you need to ration, you know?).

As I went down, if I was strongly craving more smokes each day than I was at in my working-down, I swapped for an herbal (I don't mean weed, I mean other herbs) cigarette instead. The good news is they mostly taste not-great and the smoke of them is harsh, so they help make you sick of smoking. :/ I should add that I had long stopped smoking cigarettes with additives -- if you still do, switching those those without would be a good first step, because unfortunately, we're also addicted to the additives, not just the nicotine. Having to come off both at once is a lot.

2) Once I got down to just a few a day, I used the patch and let myself still have 2-3 a day if I felt I needed them (I usually did) for about a week or so. Despite what it says in the instructions, it is okay to *occasionally* have cigarettes -- not many, though! -- when you use it and won't kill you. There are studies they have done on this that showed people who can still sometimes smoke as they start the patch do better with it than those who go totally cold turkey. So, I started the patch when I still was at smoking 2-3 a day, and let myself do that for about my first week or so on the patch.

3) After that, I used a vaporizer with a 0% nicotine fluid in it. Now: that was BEFORE we knew a lot of what we know about some kinds of vaping, so you might want to reconsider that yourself.

4) I also: used that app. Made sure I never had access to more smokes in a day than I was allowed on my cut-down schedule (living a very hilly mile and a half away from where I could buy them helped). I mostly did NOT hang around smokers or places where people are smoking. I told *everyone* I was quitting and to say no if I asked them when a smoker was around me. I kept a lot of hard candy on hand, and I did not give myself grief about weight gain, which usually does happen when we quit, and that's just how it is. I made sure that nothing I owned -- my clothes, linens, etc. -- smelled like smoke before I stopped the cigarettes. I also was in the hospital and in bed, unable to go outside, for a solid week after my surgery, which helped (and that's also when I stopped vaping the 0% fluid, though I kept it around for a while, which made me feel better even though I wasn't using it). I asked friends to be supportive of me.

There's probably more little stuff, but that's the biggies! I'm happy to talk more about this if you want. Quitting is hard, really hard: I don't see any reason not to be truthful about that. But it's also doable. I tried a bunch of times in my life before this last time, and was pretty sure I couldn't quit for forever, especially since I was never one of those smokers who didn't like smoking: I loved smoking, tbh. But I just crossed the three year mark in January, and I don't see me going back to it again -- especially since quitting is so hard! -- even though it still smells good when someone on the street is smoking, and I still sometimes wish I had the insta-stress-relief it offered me.