theshortone

I don't think you want to do that kind of surgery in korea. The recovery is really long. I had to have my mouth shut for two weeks, then surgery again, to unshut my mouth.

 

Hello everyone! I had my plastic surgery on January 15, 2018 and it's now almost been 11 months so it would be a good time to write my experience.

Background: I am currently 28 years old, female, and I was born with a cleft lip and palate. I had all my surgeries in the USA, I had three rhinoplasties in the USA when I was 19, 20, & 21. I was never happy with my result because my nose looked so asymmetrical. I also had a flat bridge, and my breathing on my right nostril wasn't 100% (see pic below). I told myself, once I got enough $$ I would go and find the best surgeon in the world. My self esteem was pretty bad.

I scheduled 3 weeks to stay in Korea, if my consultations didn't go well, I would just treat the three weeks as vacation. I ended up staying four weeks...see below why...

My journey to finding clinics: I heavily searched cleft rhinoplasty in Korea. I had always heard that Korea was the plastic surgery center of the world and had the best surgeons. I didn't have high hopes for American doctors because they all had results that I didn't like. Before I went to Korea, I had three places that I had lined up to see: MVP (they heavily advertise cleft rhinoplasty), Gangnam severance hospital, and a friend recommendation. I also found a doctor on the American Cleft association page, that was located in Korea, but couldn't find him online and just thought he retired.

The clinic I ended up with: So, funny story. I consulted with Gangnam severance hospital, and asked the doctor there if he had recommendation that I could consult with. He actually recommended his teacher, who had retired from university but now works in private practice. Guess what? That doctor ended up being the SAME doctor that was listed on the Cleft Association site, they had spelt his name wrong. That is how I ended up at CBK Plastic Surgery.

Meeting Dr. Park @ CBK. Gangnam hospital had made an appointment for me to see Dr. Park that same day, so we hustled from the hospital to his office in Gangnam. Dr. Park spoke english so that was a plus for me. He is also 70 years old, but he basically focused on cleft patients his entire medical career. This was amazing because not every doctor can just perform cleft rhinoplasty. As our noses are completely different and more complex than normal people. I consulted with Dr. Park for an hour and decided to book surgery with him the following monday (this was thursday). He was very honest and said that it won't be perfect, and that I may need a second surgery. I was ok with that. He said that he would need to fix the foundation first, before focusing on the cosmetics. It made sense because you can't build a house without the foundation. The only issue was that his entire staff did not speak english, so it was SUPER hard to communicate. But, we saw they had a chinese translator, and luckily, my boyfriend spoke chinese. So he translated from Chinese to English, back to Chinese, to Korean. It was a dozy . Before we left, CBPK said that they were working on getting english translators.

What I got done: I got cleft rhinoplasty, had my bridge a little bit higher, fix my scar, and gave my lip a little bit more filling.

Surgery day: We arrived at 9am on Monday morning, and prepped for surgery. My surgery was suppose to last about 3-4 hours, however, it ended up being 7 hours because Dr. Park spent a lot of time trying to fix all the mistakes the USA doctors made. For example, the USA doctor tried to give me a bridge, so they put something on my bridge, but that thing, ended up out of place. The USA doctor also used tissue to "prop" my nose up, blocking my breathing. So he spent a lot of time, fixing those errors. I woke up and remembered I was shivering so hard. I looked this up later, and read that it was pretty normal.

After surgery: I stayed at CBK that night. My nose was all packed, my lip had stitches, and the inside of my mouth also had stitches. It was so hard breathing out of my mouth for the next 2 1/2 weeks. The next day, I saw Dr. Park and had my first treatment, where he checks everything. I ended up passing out an half hour later because I didn't eat anything. They were so nice and did everything to make sure I was ok. Dr. Park made me stay another night at CBK because he was concerned since I had passed out, and that we were in Korea by ourselves. That was super nice of him as I was suppose to only stay one night. The next day, everything was better after I ate and started walking as much as I could. I recommend that you eat as soon as you can, and start getting up and walking around.

Follow up with Dr. Park. I saw Dr. Park, every single day except on Sundays for treatment. He would check how I was doing, he changed my bandages and irrigated the wound. It was nice seeing him everyday to make sure that I was healing correctly. They had gave me a prescription for medicine, which we got downstairs in the pharmacy. I believe it was less than $20 for three weeks worth of medicine.

Dr. Park was so nice. Dr. Park noticed that my boyfriend was just wearing a wind breaker, in Jan 2018, it was one of the coldest winters Korea has ever had. So he brought one of his coats for my boyfriend to wear and keep. He really cared not only for me, but also made sure my boyfriend was ok. I was really touched by this gesture.

Uh oh...problem. I was suppose to be in Korea for three weeks. During one of my check up, Dr. Park mentioned that there was a small wound inside my nose. Basically it was necrosis because I had three other incisions that the blood vessel had died. He said I should be ok if I went home that week, but recommended we stay another week. So we decided to change our flights and stay another week. He made me clean that wound twice a day for the next week, and also when I got back to USA. By the time we left, my wound had mostly closed because of his diligence. I was so grateful that I saw him everyday because if I didn't, I'm not sure if it would had been more complicated. When we went for my checkups, I saw multiple patients (all local Koreans) that were cleft patients having surgery with Dr. Park.

I'm currently 11 months post op and I'm pretty happy. I'm planning on seeing Dr. Park Jan 2019 to see what my next options are.

I highly recommend Dr. Park if you are looking for cleft rhinoplasty. He also said he really likes complex rhinoplasty cases .

Feel free to reach out to me if you want more information, I can get you in touch with CBK.

Attached are photos of before and after. The picture with my boyfriend and I, I couldn't smile/move my lip for the next three months because of the lip surgery.

 

do you have wechat or line? i'll send you some pictures

 

can you DM me your wechat or LINE? i'll send you some pictures

 

When i went, i had my consultation first, then i decided i wanted to go with this place, so then i put a deposit down, don't rush into things because you can always come back, trust your gut and don't let them rush you into "securing a spot".

 

i dont recommend Jan because it was SO freaken cold, that we didn't end up doing anything and just chilling in the hotel room lol.

 

I went to CBK which isn't really talked on here, but i stayed for two nights because on the second day i ended up passing out and they let me stay an extra night. I don't know what i would have done if i had to go home right after surgery. But def consider places that offer overnight stays, you just never know especially if you are in a country without any support

 

Hey everyone! I'm currently five days post op for my cleft rhinoplasty, lip and scar revision. I wanted to give you guys some thoughts about MVP/CBK since there might be others who have a clef that are looking in Korea for their surgeries.

Summary if you don't want to read it: Went to consult with MVP, CBK and Gangnam severance hospital. Confident in MVP, put a deposit down. Gangnam hospital referred me to his teacher at CBK, ended up getting surgery at CBK. Currently 5 days post op.

I had been talking to MVP for about a month before i arrived to korea. I didn't put a deposit with them since I wanted to see Dr. Choi first. I've been talking to Elizabeth who is so sweet and kind and very helpful. I went to the consultation and was very confident in MVP. I did have other consultations lined up but decided to put deposit with MVP since Dr. Choi seemed very knowledgable about cleft patients. Ellen also had excellent english and was able to translate medical terms from Korean to English which was very helpful. Dr. Choi spent about an hour during my consultation, since i heard stories about patients doing five minute consultation, and the fact he spent time to explain what he was going to do made me feel safer and confident in him. I needed my nose lifted up because it was very asymmetrical, I wanted a scar revision because it was so obvious to me but I guess the scar wasn't too bad. I also needed my lips fixed because it was dented so it made it look like my right part of the lip just didn't exist. Dr. Choi was honest about not being perfect, and how he couldn't be 100% confident that the scar and lip will be "perfect" and I appreciated his honestly since nothing can ever be 100% symmetrical or make a scar completely disappear. I had friends search naver about Dr. Choi and he had articles about his work with cleft patients volunteering internationally. I think it's very important to find a doctor that continues working on cleft patients throughout their careers and it isn't a one or two case kind of thing since most cleft patients had revision surgeries before so it makes it more difficult then a regular nose.

I had on thursday a consultation lined up with Gangnam Severance Hospital that was recommended by Cleft Line (http://www.cleftline.org/who-we-are/what-we-do/team-care/international). Dr. Park listed on the cleft line wasn't on Yonsei hospital list, but we saw a Dr. Yun. Since I didn't know much about him, I knew that MVP would had been a good choice, but Dr. Yun told us that his teacher Dr. Park had retired and went into private practice and to talk with him to see if he could do anything. Dr. Yun could had performed the surgery, but I just couldn't do research about Dr. Yun so I decided not to go with him. But Gangnam Severance Hospital actually made a consultation appointment with Dr. Park who is now at CBP Plastic Surgery for a consultation. So we ended up at CBK and I was really blown away by Dr. Park. He spoke english, had been working on cleft patients for 40 years in Korea and internationally. He also was a doctor at GNG before, which I wanted to do a consultation with but they didn't have any cleft patients so that's why I never went to them. We found archive materials on GNG that promoted Dr. Park on doing cleft rhinoplasty, but after he left, they didn't offer that anymore. We spent 4 hours at CBK, I had about hour consultation with Dr. Park who told me he needed to fix the foundation of my face first, and that this wasn't strictly cosmetic but more structural also. He said surgery would be about four hours that he had special technique to make scar more vertical instead of the slanted scar that I had. He also told me that I probably need to come back for a minor revision surgery since his focus was getting the foundation, and the nose back up right. The revision surgery will just give my nose a better cosmetic look. The only thing about CBK is they don't cater to english speakers, only Chinese and Korean. So after we were done with Dr. Park it was hard to communicate with the rest of the staff since they didn't speak any english at all. Then I realized that they have fliers and things in Chinese and they had a chinese translator! So my boyfriend became a translator for me. Korean to Chinese to English. That was probably why we spent so many hours at CBK lol.

So I decided to go with CBK. Because Dr. Park's name is spelled so differently on a cleftline site, that was why we couldn't find him. We ended up googling him in Chinese and found a bunch of articles about his work, interviews, papers written by him. So I felt pretty confident in him. We ended up talking with Dr. Choi who is CBK facial contouring specialists who speaks English, and says Dr. Park is his boss (even though they all co-own the clinic), even though he's 70 years old, DR. Park wouldn't let Dr. Choi do simple things during surgery because Dr. Park is so meticulous and wants to be perfect. I saw many patients here getting their jaw done, and I also saw another cleft patient that thad surgery a day after mine. There was a lot of Koreans in the waiting room, and some chinese patients that had their jaw surgery. But the clinic was pretty busy at times.

I had my surgery on monday and currently it's saturday in Korea. I think i'm getting my bandages off on Monday so i'm really excited to finally be able to breathe again. I've seen Dr. Park everyday since I left the hospital on Wednesday. CBK wanted me to stay the night of the surgery, but MVP would had sent me back to my hotel. I think it was good i ended up staying at the hospital because the next day I ended up passing out from the lack of food and my body is pretty small so I guess it just didn't know what to do lol. but they took care of me and had me stay another night just to be safe. I'm seeing Dr. Park everyday until I leave Korea. He also wants me to come back in six months for a check up, which I think is pretty cool he wanted me to do that because it's not like other places where they perform surgery and never see you again. My surgery took about 6 hours because when Dr. Park went in, the american doctors that had performed surgery on me three different times and randomly used tissue and things to prop my nose up, and using tissue and cartilage wrong since those doctors weren't really specialized in cleft patients. I think that's very important to choose the right doctor because for complicated cases, you don't want to choose any doctor. They need to be practicing the specialty in their careers.

Thanks for listening to the random thoughts, I'll post update as the bandages come off in the next few days. Let me know if you have questions about MVP or CBK Or Gangnam hospital.

 

i'm currently in korea, surgery is tomorrow. ID: theshortone

 

Do you have a kakao . I’m currently in Seoul and found a really amazing cleft rhino surgeron. Mine is theshortone my surgery scheduled for Monday.

 

Is he looking for a cleft surgeon? I'm traveling to korea saturday and seeing three different doctors for cleft rhino.

i added him to kakao

 

Does anyone know if I need a medical visa to SK? I can't seem to find the correct answer online. I'm coming from the USA, MVP says I can just come in with my passport? What would I say to the immigration agent when they are asking why I'm in korea?

 

really? I thought they were good at noses because of Dr. Choi? When are you going in Jan 2018? Im looking at my date around first week of jan

 

That lady has been posting about how bad MVP at nose was but she doesn't offer any details. so weird??

 

i'm actually talking with Elizabeth right now for a Jan date. let me know how it goes?!

 

i read that korea doesn't allow non board certified surgeons to operate on foreigners. Only 2,200 board certified surgeons...

 

Please keep us updated! I also have a cleft and been looking for places in Korea too!