My name is Marissa, and I’m gonna be having rhinoplasty surgery by Dr. Rawnsley in two weeks!

There was a time when I thought I had the cutest nose and then few accidents happen – softball soccer other activities – and it started to look a little different than what I remember looking like. You can look at pictures and you look at your friends, man I wish I’d looked like them too. But the reason I waited for so long to finally schedule the appointment or even have a consultation is because everyone I saw get rhinoplasty got the same nose, they got the same exact cookie cutter, overly pinched, overly scooped out. Like you looked at them and you knew that they’d had a nose job and I wanted to find someone that made something different on every single person that that fit their face, they could have been born with it. I don’t want someone to look at me and know that I had it done.

My grandfather is a surgeon, he used to work at UCLA, he recommended Dr. Rawnsley to me. I went on to Dr. Rawnsley’s website. I found a blog. In the blog post it talked about the math and science behind a nose job, that it’s not just artistry, that there are layers that can go into it to making sure everyone gets the right look for themselves. Reading that blog made me feel comfortable enough to pick up the phone and make that phone call and come in for that appointment and that I could trust someone and tell them that I wanted them to figure out what was right for me not just what they’d already done before.

The first time at Dr. Rawnsley– it was for my consultation, and I felt a lot calmer than I expected to. I had been a really nervous to come in. I was scared that I was going to be told that I had to look a certain way or that certain things were gonna happen. Instead he just examined me, made sure I didn’t have any underlying issues that were gonna be making the surgery difficult, let me talk to him about what it was that I wanted, and then he showed me different versions of what could work and we discussed what it was that we both had as an end goal. Being a part of the decision-making process made it feel like this was a no brainer this was the only choice to make was to come here.

During my consultation with Dr. Rawnsley he did computer imaging i sat right next to him I watched him sculpt my face from the side, from the front, or I should say my nose, from the front and from the side, and he showed me what I could look like after surgery. He discussed why he was doing certain things and I was giving him my input and we made a partnership and we kind of created a plan for what I could look like after surgery was done and I trusted his eye and his opinion so much. I mean there wasn’t anything I wanted to tweak, he did such a great job.

Two weeks before surgery, I’m honestly a little nervous, I have ups and downs. There are days where I stare at myself in the mirror and I imagine what I’m gonna look like. My husband took a photo of me last week and it was from an angle where I’m looking down and you can see the way the sun is hitting on the hump right here “it’s like oh my gosh two more weeks and it’s gone, two more weeks and it’s gone.” But then I wake up and there’s that moment of fear because I mean it’s a surgery and I’m getting up and I’m going in and I’m gonna have something done and I’m gonna be gone from work but then I look at that before and after a photo and then I just got really excited again and I and I can’t wait for it to be two weeks from now. I drove by on the way here today and it’s like oh my gosh just two more weeks.

Hi, I’m Marissa. I had just had rhinoplasty with Dr. Rawnsley seven weeks ago today and I think I look amazing.

I’m really happy. I stare at myself in the mirror all the time. I take pictures. I go to the side of my camera, I go to the front I mean I don’t think I’ve ever taken so many selfies before in my life.

When I woke up from surgery I didn’t have any pain at all. I woke up and I was tired I was lethargic, we’ll say, but I wasn’t in pain. Everyone had told me I wasn’t gonna be in pain. Dr. Rawnsley told me this wasn’t a painful procedure, but I mean surgery, you think it’s gonna hurt a bit, but I was completely fine. I spent a week at home off work with a cast on my face just watching TV eating snacks and then exactly one week after surgery I came in and had my cast removed. It was the day I’ve been waiting for. Finally got to see what was under there. Everything I didn’t like about my nose was already better. I knew it was a little swollen it was just from surgery, but it was it was night and day improvement already just one week after surgery. I was worried that I was gonna go out into public and people would know I had something done. I didn’t want to be that person that they were like “oh you you’ve had work done.” But I’ve gone out and I’ve seen my friends and I’ve been kind of actually waiting now for them to be like “oh my gosh, look at your nose, you look so wonderful.” But no one’s known, instead it’s been “you look so pretty, is this new makeup? is your hair different?” that they know something’s different they know something’s better but they don’t know what it is. And then when I point it out they look to me in they go “wait, turn your head,” and they all do the same sound, “ahh, you look so good, it looks so good.” It just makes me feel so happy that it doesn’t look fake because they don’t know it’s there, but it just, I guess it looks like me but better. It’s cute, it’s adorable, it, it looks like– when you look at other people everyone’s noses are different, and then you can see those other ones that look all the same.

This one just looks like the one that I should have gotten from birth and I had to go see Dr. Rawnsley to pick it up.