ljlydia

Hey y’all, thanks again for all the encouragement and support. Yes, I’m going to wait a couple months for it to settle down and decide on if I’m happy with the results just to lessen the stress over the possible assymetry and the excess fat they left in there. They did offer a free revision if there’s still a problem later on so that’s good. So I got my stitches taken out on the 5th day. Here’s some updates on my eyes!

 

Thank you guys for all the support!! @sparklingeyes It was $1101 because of the Misooda coupon! I think it was a summer promotion, all I remember is that the promotion was redeemable until the end of this month which is why I planned my trip to go before that time. Maybe they’ll have it next summer but I’m not too sure

Anyways my lips are healing so nicely and Dr. Hong’s stitching is really good. He’s the best surgeon I’ve been to yet for stitching I think. I’ll post a picture for y’all to see!

 

Thanks frangranceaddict for the feedback. I appreciate all your advice. I’ll be taking it and stop letting this stay all in my hair for those pretty results

 

Hey Frangranceaddict, I appreciate your response. However I think it’s very assuming to say that I would not have stopped after listening to their feedback. Because I listened to their advice during our discussion, I ended up deciding not to get anything done or push for anything. I also understand this is situation that many clinics face, where a patient wants to check in with the doctor over their surgery because they’re concerned about their results. My review was basically about how my real, unfiltered experience of that scenario with them went, which I feel people online here would appreciate. That being said, just because this is a common occurrence for them does not get the clinic off the hook of the responsibility of listening to their patients concerns during follow up. I think it’s a little forward for you to say that “they did what they had to do.” I don’t think belittling/laughing while I was talking was what they had to do. Merely informing me was what they had to do. I am a consenting adult who is making an informed decision after listening to others’ opinions, not someone who needs to be forced into doing what’s best for me by being humiliated. However my takeaway was that there is a way to have these kinds of discussions without putting people down, and to be wary of Opera in case you don’t want that kind of experience, which is what my review was about.

 

Alright guys, so I’m here with my updated review since I just finished meeting with them. The one takeaway from our meeting for me is that, guys if you can afford to, please stay away from here. While the price is alluring, it doesn’t really lessen the sting of being treated like the way I was when I was talking to them about my concerns. I can understand it being too early for surgery and being able to see the final results, which is something I’d have been fine with being told, but I’d say the way they delivered the message was condescending and rude. After explaining my concerns about my eyes to Dr. Kwak, he got very agitated and started raising his voice/responding to me in an angry manner about how “this is how Koreans do it, this is how Koreans like it” etc. I think the hallmark of a doctor should be to listen to the patient’s concerns without opinion or preconceived judgements, which was not the case with Dr. Kwak. It doesn’t matter how other people think or consider standard, if the patient in question is stating their preference for their results, then that should be the focus of the conversation. I believe he took my concerns as a personal attack on him on his skills, which I never thought was the issue. So be warned purseforumers, dealing with Dr. Kwak is like dealing with a caseload of ego. Irena unfortunately was not much better. She kept laughing at me during our conversation and throwing her head back in an exasperated way saying I just couldn’t understand what her and Dr. Kwak were saying about my eyes being fine. I was extremely disappointed with their behavior because for such grown adults, they both reacted very egotistically about the matter and didn’t mind belittling me and referring to me as the “naive and worrisome” patient. I know there aren’t a lot of bad reviews on Opera here so just wanted to let you guys know who are interested in consulting with them, take their prices with a grain of salt. I was basically laughed out of the clinic. Bad attitudes don’t make up for money you’re saving if you can afford going somewhere else.

 

Hey guys, so here’s a previous picture of my lips to gauge with sizing if that helps. My lips are pretty swollen right now I will say so I will update with better after pictures once it goes down.

Also, just a warning to you guys who are interested in paying for the promotional rate for the procedure. Make sure to go through Misooda first because I’m pretty sure I just got lucky in my case where the consultant let me negotiate for having that pricing even though I had contacted them first.

 

Hi again guys, I realize I should have combined my two clinic experiences but since it’s too late now I just want to share my experiences with Opera. While I’m not entirely unhappy with how my revisional DES with them turned out, I’m still a little satisfied with my results. I guess this is more of a warning for those like me who were drawn to Opera for their prices.

Prior to my surgery with opera, I have been talking with their English/Russian consultant Irena about logistics and pricing. We had agreed upon revisional DES, ptosis correction, and lateral canthoplasty reconstruction for me in a one day surgery after I had gave them my deposit. Fast forward a month later, I came to Opera and checked in with reception and met my English consultant. The clinic was moderately busy with locals, and I was the only one from abroad there that day it seemed. From the time I was supposed to be there for my scheduled consultation to when I actually met with Dr. Kwak to consult was a lag time of 1.5 hours. I guess he was running late taking care of other patients but I did think that was a little extreme.

Dr. Kwak sat down with me and prodded my eyes for a bit while asking questions. He assessed I had too little skin and fat on my eyelid to do a traditional revision surgery where they excise skin. I told him I wanted lower my double eyelids to the point where I looked like I have mono lids, which he responded that wasn’t possible but he’d try his best. He said there was going to be a chance my old double eyelid would come back so I would need to wear tape on my eyelids for two months after surgery. Dr. Kwak also informed me since my revisional DES was going to be already complicated for him to do, ptosis correction and lateral canthoplasty at the same time was not going to be possible. That was disappointing however I rolled with it because that was the main concern I did want to fix anyways.

After my consultation where he had decided on 1) revisional DES with no skin excision and 2) fat repositioning on my eyelids, I was taken to the back to change for operation. Irena took my payment for both procedures. Surgery was painless and I was shuffled out after I was done maybe an hour and a half later. Irena showed me my eyes in a mirror and told me to use the ice pack and the medicine she gave me when I got home.

When I got home I noticed the stitches on my right eye were not done the same as on my left eye. While not completely an inner double eyelid, my left eye was still satisfactory lowered about halfway to how it used to be/where I expected realistically given my lack of eyelid skin. My left eye had the traditional downward curve on the outer corners of the DES stitching line but my right eye had just a straight line extending from the middle to the the outer corner. I contacted Irena about it right away, which she said not to worry because it was most likely just swelling but that she’d try to arrange for me to come in again to assess it with Dr. Kwak. Since it was Saturday, she said the earliest she could let me know was the following Monday at 10 am. Monday morning came, and she messaged me saying that Dr. Kwak has the day off that day so to come the next day at 2:30 to meet with him. And that leads me to where I am now, typing my experience out. I will update more on how my meeting with them goes but I did have a tense moment with Irena when asking for a possible revision surgery on my right eyelid. While she assured me before operation that a revision within one year would be free, it was hard to get her to confirm whether I’d be able to do surgery again this week. She kept responding saying that Dr. Kwak and her don’t think I needed it and that my issue was most likely just swelling, which I understood but I wanted to know if another revision surgery could proceed anyway if I wanted it. Her answer was a little bit dodgy, to the point I’m not sure they’ll give me a revision surgery. It does seem like they’re going to rule that I don’t need it for the sake of simplifying matters, which is just my gut intuition. Regardless, I’ll find out for sure today and update how it goes. Here’s a picture of my eyelids to show what I’m talking about it.

 

I’ve been researching on the smile lift procedure for over a year now and purseforum helped me get started on the right direction, so I feel like I owe it to everyone on here to share how it turned out for me. I know I would have loved some more info on people sharing their smile lift experiences since there’s not a lot of info on the net about it in English, so hopefully this helps people out.

I’m currently recuperating at the clinic while writing this review. I plan on updating this thread with pictures and more details from my experience once I get home. For now I just want to share that I feel like I’ve gotten the results I came here for I suffered from resting ***** face after a bullhorn + corner lip lift gone wrong so my intent coming to Korea was to fix that. I just graduated so with my student debt in mind, I knew I couldn’t be too choosy on where I wanted to go. I had considered Aone and Deesse but Misooda’s promotion on the smile lift at Hyundai was about half the price they were quoting me so that ended up being why I chose to go with Hyundai. I don’t know if I’m allowed to share the price on this forum so if anyone let’s me know if it’s okay then I’ll update this and share it.

Initially, I had contacted an English consultant from Hyundai on Kakaotalk. After chatting with them for a while I asked if they could give me the Misooda price, which they said they’d honor if I wrote a review on the site. I agreed and booked my plane for Korea. Fast-forward a month later, I came to the clinic and got lost. Just some advice for people wanting to check out this clinic, do not go to the 5th or 6th floor, reception is on the second floor. I ended up waiting for 20 minutes on the 6th floor with medical staff just walking past me.

Finally realized that something was wrong and went to the other floor labeled Hyundai Clinic on the elevator. There I checked in and met with Miss Mui, my Misooda translator. Hyundai’s in-house English consultant Sky was out of the country this week so she set me up with someone from Misooda to come help me during my consult instead. I filled out some paperwork, chatted with her for a bit until they called us in. We met with the head consultant first, who asked me some basic questions and explained a little bit about the surgery. After that we were shuffled to meet with Dr. Seungjae Hong. He showed me in a mirror using q-tips on my face the two types of smile lift surgeries they do there: 1) natural/minimal scarring, and 2) slightly more aggressive/potential scarring. Initially I wanted option 2, since I felt like my lips were much more downturned than your average person. After talking a bit, we decided to go in between options one and two for me since Dr. Hong didn’t want to give too much scarring since I already has some from my last lip surgery. After that we were shuffled to meet with the head consultant again to be shown pictures of how both options would look like since I requested to be shown how bad scarring could potentially be.

This is when things sort of went awry. While we were chatting, the head consultant mentioned that since this would be considered revision lip surgery because I had previous scarring from my past lip surgery, the pricing would be more than what was quoted on the Misooda site. I was shocked because I explained to them that I had only brought the amount the consultant quoted me, which was the Misooda promotion amount. The head consultant looked confused and asked I had mentioned if I had previous lip surgery done to my English consultant on Kakao and then proceeded to tell me she wasn’t sure if I could proceed with surgery then. I told her that I had and showed her proof on my Kakaotalk app, and her and my translator realized the in-house consultant must have missed me mentioning that in between all the texts and questions/logistics about my surgery. Either way Miss Mui was seriously a god-send. She kept advocating for me and asking if anything could be done like if I agreed to take extra photos/write reviews for them. I seriously was just lost while her and the head consultant just went back and forth about what could be done until the head consultant went out to confirm with I’m not sure who but guessing other higher ups, but she’s came back saying that they’d honor the original quoted price. I guess it was a combination of it being their mistake, me coming all the way from the California to Korea based on wrong info, and me promising to still write my Misooda review that I ended up being super fortunate and have things turn out so fair for me. I got super scared for a second because even though I had gotten revisional DES done two days before, my objective coming to Korea was really about fixing my lips. I don’t know how else to put this without sounding like a shill but I’m so thankful I had Misooda on my side otherwise I don’t think Hyundai would have let me have surgery for the amount I paid.

Fast forward to surgery, Dr. Hong was super kind and asking me constantly if I was okay the whole time he was operating on me. It took about an hour, which I thought was reasonable considering they had to deal with some old scar tissue on my lips and getting rid of some dissolvable stitches still there from my previous surgery. The surgery was painless since I was put on sedation instead of local anesthesia, which I’m not sure is everyone’s case but was for mine since I was a more difficult case.

Anyways, I’ll come back and write some more later with updates and pictures since I’m tired. But here’s me currently!

 

Hi Nina! Do you mind updating us on your eyes with pictures? I'd love to see how they turned out! I'm interested in double eyelid revision as well so it would help me so much!

 

Omg those look so good! Yeah unfortunately still haven’t gotten access to babitalk yet T_T

 

Hi leedawon! I know I'm quoting you from long ago but would it be possible for me to use your babitalk login for me to check out the pictures on Opera as well? I'd love to see them!

 

Just messaged you!!

 

Just popping in. I've been a silent reader on this thread and decided to book a consultation with Opera, so thanks everyone! Wondermuffin, would it be possible for you to send the same Soyoung diary link for Opera that you sent? I'd love to see them too! I wish I could read it