ayla

Can you recommend a bandage online? The consultant said that I don’t need to wear after surgery but this doesn’t seem to be the experience I’ve seen anywhere else.

 

I’ve always been very self conscious of the squareness and sharp jaw angle of my face. My friend wanted to correct her deviated septum and also open her eyes. We have been planning our trip for several months and couldn’t have done it without the information from the Purse Forum. I just wanted to add my experiences to the knowledge base already here!


When we started looking into clinics, we short listed 4 clinics and scheduled consultations. These clinics were selected based on size and positive reviews. As a note, money was not an object, we don’t think this is something that should affect our final decision on which clinic to go with. The clinics we went to were:


JK Plastic Surgery

Our very first consult was with Lucy and Dr. Kim. Lucy’s English was excellent and she translated for the doctor. We realized later that for the consultations, there are really two levels of consultants, they are either interpreters or interpreters with the skill/authority to provide recommendations. Lucy was more of the former, she recorded our areas of primary concern and presented it to the doctor for a plan.


In my case, my main concern was my jaw. Additionally, since I was already in South Korea, I wanted to slightly improve my nose by reducing the size of the base and increasing the sharpness of the tip. Based on the size of my jaw, the doctor said that there would only be minor improvements if I remove part of the jaw, and other treatments (e.g. bucial fat removal, chin implant) would not give the same look since I didn’t have the fat/reduced chin that those treatments would address. His recommendation was to do botox on the jaw muscles plus fat grafting to even out my face. My nose job would require touching the bridge of the nose, which was something I did not want.


For both procedures, I was quoted 12,000,000 won. Although I ultimately did not go with JK, their facilities felt very new and professional and I felt confident in the doctor’s abilities. What was proposed did not address what was my areas of concern.


Her She

Although this clinic is not widely reviewed on the forum, I went to the clinic on the recommendation of two of my friends that had gone in 2016 to have procedures and were very happy with the results. The consultant Claire took down our areas of concern and made recommendations to us before having us meet with the doctors for their evaluation. Claire did not try to upsell on any procedures, and in fact, was keen on talking me out of the nose job since the changes would be so minor. The pricing for this clinic was in US dollars. The recommendation was a jaw reduction surgery for $5,000 USD and a slight reduction of the base of my nose and a build up of the tip via donated ear cartilage for $3,850. The doctors that saw us seemed very confident and experienced, and the walls of the clinic were full of photos of satisfied clients.


Banobagi

Although this was not the top clinic for myself nor my friend, this is the clinic that we ended up going with based on a number of factors. The plastic clinic itself occupies an entire lowrise building with additional derma and dental clinics in separate buildings. The reception area of the plastic clinic was bustling with locals and foreigners – we later even saw that there was a Russian girl on staff for their clientele. What really impressed us was the fact that to ensure that an accurate plan was provided, the clinic took high quality facial photos that were printed out for discussion as well as x-rays. The x-ray is particularly important in the case o v-line since you can see the exact location of the nerve and where it is placed on your jaw.


Our consultant, Jane, discussed the areas of concern and there was no pressure from her. Since the improvements on my nose were so minor, she did explain how a surgery could work on making adjustments but the change visually would not be drastic. For a v-line jaw reduction, Dr Oh showed me various before and after photos of a similar type of surgery and answered any questions that I had.


The most important tidbit that we learnt was that if you are brought here with an agency (we assume this would mean docfinder etc.), they are unable to discount the pricing as much. I was quoted 7,700,000 won for jaw reduction which was then discounted by 30%, bringing down the total to 5,390,000 won. The suggested nose augments (tip plasty and alar reduction) would have been about 4,000,000 won before discount. The total price also included one night at the hospital and a later treatment and massage in several days but not the antibiotics or painkillers for the days after.


In the end, the professionalism of this hospital, the support staffing and the quality of aftercare was what sold both myself and my friend on Banobagi.


GNG

On our day of appointments, this was our very last appointment. I was already a little offput by an email a week before our appointment asking that my appointment be moved to a day after – I’m sure clinics know that foreign visitors were here only for a limited period of time so I’m not sure why they requested that I move. I stated that it was not possible and the original appointment time was kept. To keep the review of this clinic short, although our appointment was at 4 pm, we left just before 7 pm – this was the longest appointment we were at and if this had been earlier with another appointment behind it, we likely would have had to miss the subsequent appointments.


The consultant that we had, Shirley, was more of an interpreter and we had another consultant that only spoke Korean that made recommendations. In our case, this consultant spent the vast majority of the time sighing and trying to schedule the surgery despite the fact that we had not spoken to a doctor nor received pricing. This was extremely surprising and rather presumptive. The sighing was also incredibly rude, and although the clinic itself was extremely modern, with an x-ray machine to take our scans as well as CT, and doctors that seemed very knowledgable and experienced, this was a big factor in us deciding against the clinic. It’s really a shame, GNG was one of my top picks if not the top pick for hospital was I was most interested in, but I didn’t feel like that attitude was appropriate and trustworthy.


The price quoted for jaw reduction and various levels of nose revision (I don’t recall the finer details of this as I had basically checked out mentally at this point) was 7,500,000 won plus 10% VAT which they had not included in the final total. The pricing was in line with the other clinics but this clinic did not earn my business.



Banobagi Preexam

This was pretty routine, our blood was drawn, metrics such as blood pressure and heart rate was taken and we were advised on what to do before surgery. At this point, payment was also due so this was the point of no return.


Surgery Day

As prepared as you can be with research, personally, I was detached from the whole experience until this day. And walking into the surgery room, that is when everything got real for me. Before surgery, you are able to speak with your doctor one last time. Dr Oh did inquire as to whether I wanted to have any revisions to my chin but I opted to have as little additional work as possible.


Waking up from the general anesthesia was hard, each person has a different reaction to it and mine so happened to be crying uncontrollably. Devon was there during the recovery and luckily I was able to be moved to a hospital bed relatively quickly. The night and morning after was my body just recovering and adjusting but I was constantly checked in on by nurses so I never felt unsupported. The fridge on the floor also had facial masks to ice down your face with so I was always able to apply one. When I left Banobagi, I was provided with the instructions to continue icing with 2 masks that they gave me plus to rinse with an iodine gargle every 2 hours.


To be continued

I’m still currently recovering so I will update this thread as time goes on. At this time, I am very satisfied with the level of care that Banobagi has provided to me and I can’t wait to see the final results!

 

^^ That's scary ! I'd love to get something done, but all the horror stories just freak me out a little too much.