The Liz Moody Podcast - What My Nose Job Was REALLY Like—Recovery Struggles, My Biggest Regrets, How Much It Cost, and More

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Today is all about my nose job! I’m 3 weeks out from surgery, and I wanted to share with you all of the normally not-talked about details. I invited Zack on to get his view on taking care of me, plastic surgery and more, and I also answered all of YOUR questions. We talk about: Why I decided to get a nose job How I chose a good doctor How I prepped for surgery What no one shares about recovery The most useful things I bought that helped me get through the first few weeks How much it cost What Zack thought about me getting plastic surgery, how loopy I was when I woke up from anesthesia, my face looking crazy, and more My thoughts on plastic surgery both for aesthetic and functional purposes The regrets I have and so much more! If you want to see before and after (and during!) images, or if you have anymore questions, hit me up on Instagram—I’m @lizmoody! PS: My Patreon is live! You can join Green Smoothie Society and get access to ALL of my green smoothie recipes and advice! Get all the deets at patreon.com/lizmoody. This episode is sponsored by Pique Tea. I LOVE their Ginger Digestion Elixir, the Mint Herbal and the Hibiscus Beauty Elixir. I’m also OBSESSED with their Daily Radiance Liposomal Vitamin C and their matcha is one of the best around. Pique is currently offering an exclusive bundle which includes their Sun Goddess Matcha, Pique Glass Beaker, and two limited time offer bonus gifts: a handheld frother and detox book worth $45, for FREE. You can also get an additional 5% off on the bundle OR anything else on piquetea.com/lizmoody using my code LIZMOODY. This episode is sponsored by Seed, the makers of one of my all-time favorite supplements. Their Seed Daily Synbiotic is a game changer—it contains both pre- and probiotics, survives INTACT all the way into your gut, AND contains the most studied and powerful strains of probiotics out there. You can get 15% off of your first month’s supply of Seed’s Daily Synbiotic by going to seed.com and using the code LIZMOODY. This episode is sponsored by Paleovalley, who make incredibly high quality supplements. If you’d like to check out their Turmeric Complex, Vitamin C, Neuroeffect, or any of Paleovalley’s other amazing products, head over to paleovalley.com and use the code LIZM for 15% off. This episode is sponsored by Airocide, the makers of the air purifier that single handedly eliminated my allergies. You can get $600 off any of the air purifiers on their website by using my code LIZ600 on Airocide.com. I personally have the APS-200 PM 2.5, but they just released the Aria, which is even cuter and has an even lower price point, so that’s probably what I’d go for! Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthier Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I am a cookbook author and long-time journalist. And today I have a very special episode for you all about my rhinoplasty, which was almost three weeks ago, three weeks ago on the day that this is coming out. And I'm recording this far too close to the day that it's coming out. My editors mad at me for it. So I have a special guest star here today. Guestar, do you want to say hi? Absolutely.

Hi. I'm Zach. And you are? A lot of people know me as Liz Moody's husband. A lot of people know you is that. Numerous people. How do you feel about the amount of people who know you as Liz Moody's husband? I would prefer over the alternative.

What's the alternative? Not being Liz Moody's. Oh. Oh, that's so sweet. That did get really sweet. Only downhill from here, sweetness-wise, because I have been dealing with you recovering for a couple of weeks now. I don't think I was that bad.

That's a sneak preview. We'll see how bad I was. The reason that Zach is here is because for a lot of my recovery, I was not able to do much nor doing much. So Zach was taking on a lot of burden. And also, I had a lot of emotional, like, I don't know, we've been together. I always forget. How long have we went together? A bit.

Like 13 years? Between 10 and 15. Between 10 and 15 years. And we've obviously seen a lot of stuff. Like there was one incident where he cleaned up an overflowing toilet in a New York apartment. But I think that's the most embarrassing moment of my life. We had just flown in from London. And I was having a panic attack for some reason.

And I didn't understand. Like, we were staying in my uncle's apartment. And I didn't, like, understand how the toilet worked. And it was, like, finicky. And I remember actively having a panic attack and coming into the, the room to wake you up because I didn't know what to do and I didn't know how to handle it and having to be like, my shit is on the floor and I don't know what to do. It's just a great way to process.

So there was that. So the point is we've been through a lot of things together, but I was still nervous about it felt very vulnerable to me, both how, like, I don't want to say how ugly I was planning on being by having this surgery, but that, how out of control I worried a lot about I'd heard about when you wake up from anesthesia, you're like awake but not really awake and you say weird things and you do weird things. Sneak preview that may have happened. But I was very nervous about that.

There's something just very vulnerable about losing control of your mind, your body. And a lot of this process for me has really been about letting go of control in a lot of ways. So that's been a really big part of my rhinoclasty journey. Yeah. I mean, it's, it is insane to put yourself in the hands. of somebody. It's actually, it's insane how few of us for so much of our early lives from when we

stop being like the youth and start being like quite old. I'm at youth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That we don't put ourselves fully in the care of others. Like full trust, full care. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. So your point is we do that when we're babies.

And sometimes we do that at the tail end of our life as well. But in the interim, you're always. For many of us, you're always maintaining that little bit of control. And for me, particularly maintaining a lot of control is a huge way that I deal with my anxiety to my own detriment, I think. I think that I use control. Like, for instance, I deal with my fear of flying. And I've gotten better about this.

And we have a whole episode coming out about fear of flying really soon that I'm very excited to share, which has a lot of helpful tips about how I've overcome fear of flying. And really a lot of that is about letting go of control as well. but one of the ways I dealt with my fear of flying was to like check the weather really like intimately to know the every aircraft detail to you know know the weather patterns of a city to know what the airport was like and like the runway length and stuff like that and just things that I was trying to pretend to have control over a situation that I never really had control over to make my anxiety feel better. So for me, this process of letting go of control with my surgeon, with my recovery has been a really big point of growth for me in this whole process. So let's start at the beginning. Ten years ago, maybe no longer. It has to have been longer. I always say 10 years, but we've been together longer than that. It was before we met. When I met you, it was known that you were bad on a surfboard.

I was traveling by myself in Brazil and I went surfing in this place called Florianapolis. It's like a surf town. And the very first time that I went out surfing, my board sort of came up on a wave. I had not even stood up yet. There was no real surf. It was me and a surfboard in the water, but surfing would be a very strong term for what happened that day. And my wave caught my board. It came up. It hit me in the face. It broke my nose. And I had a really shoddy plastic surgeon fix it. I thought nothing of it. This was a time that I was doing a lot of drugs. I was partying a lot. I didn't think about long-term repercussions of almost anything in my life at this point. And I also thought of myself is relatively invincible. Although, around the same time, there's a really

interesting sort of melange factors that are hard to untangle. So on the same period of time in Brazil is when I had an eating disorder. I was severely underweight. I was doing a lot of drugs and partying. And I ended up having a seizure on the beach after smoking some weed that was of questionable origin. And also, I hadn't eaten anything. And I got taken to a public hospital, which was a really scary experience. And there were people in all sorts of states of disarray there. and all the doctor there told me was that my blood sugar was really low and he gave me a bag of chips and sent me on my way. And at the time, again, because I was like sort of this party girl and this party phase in my life, I was like, oh, whatever, that's cool. I think I went to carnival right after

in Salvador, Salvador. We have a friend named Salvador in Salvador, I think. And but later, I realized how much that caused PTSD. for me. So I only connect that. I only mention that because my anxiety, I really pinpoint my anxiety starting to be bad on this trip to Brazil. So that's when I started having pretty regular panic attacks. I would say like a few months after this trip. And that's only interesting because later in my life, I realized the connection between breathing and anxiety. So I went for years having these panic attacks. I didn't self-diagnosed with PTSD for years and I didn't have a professional diagnosed me of PTSD for even longer. But I was just kind of like having panic attacks. Like when we were first dating, I feel like sometimes you'd come over and I'd be like, oh, just had a panic attack. Like,

let's go live our best life now. You're very quiet with your panic attacks. Yeah. In some ways, that's like. Disconcerting. It's a little disconcerting. You're like, oh, hey, reading that good book. Like, no, no, I'm really in a world of pain in there. Oh, cool, cool, cool, cool. So I was just, yeah, I was kind of like quietly having panic attacks. I was not in therapy. I wasn't really doing anything. And I no way would I associate my anxiety with anything in my physical body.

I couldn't breathe, but I wasn't paying attention to the fact that I couldn't breathe because I wasn't paying attention to anything in my body. I was smoking and eating like crap and doing a lot of. drugs and just really disassociated from my physical self. And then I started, I went through a really, really, really terrible period of anxiety when we lived in London, which I've talked about in other places. And I won't bore you with here, but just severe panic attacks became completely glorophobic, wouldn't leave the house for days, if not weeks at a time, wouldn't leave my bed for similar lengths of time. And then when we moved back to the U.S., I started working on my anxiety actively,

and I ended up getting a role as an editor at a wellness magazine. And that was really fun because all of a sudden I was surrounded by all of these like wellness enthusiasts who knew so much about different, like we were all kind of subject matter experts because, you know, you have the beauty editor and she's just really an expert in clean beauty. And then I was the food director. So I was meant to kind of everybody would come to me and be like, oh, I'm making this for dinner or like, what should I eat for my gut health or what

should I eat for this? And we had a fitness editor who you could ask all your fitness questions too. So the fact that we were all kind of subject matter experts was really, really, really fun. And about a year or so into that job, I went through a period of terrible insomnia. Like the worst insomnia of my life, I didn't sleep for three or four days. And everybody at work was trying to solve my insomnia issue with their own specific expertise. So I had like the fitness editor teaching me the types of fitness and the times of day to work out to sleep. And the beauty editor didn't do much. What's that?

She probably helped me like look more refreshed. I remember one day I came to the office and the editor-in-chief was like, you look terrible. You look correct, girl. You do not look well. But our wellness editor, so wellness at this site was kind of considered stuff that didn't fall into other. categories was like, oh, you need to try breathwork. And she was like, breathwork help my insomnia so much. It helps my anxiety so much. It makes the biggest difference. And I was like, what to breath work? She's like, oh, you breathe in for a count of this much. You hold for this much. And then you

exhale. And I tried to do it. And I like couldn't do it. I was just like, wait a second. I can't breathe through my nose. And it was this crazy realization because I had just never tried to isolate nose breathing. And it did come up, you know, some of my more embarrassing moments was like, I've been in conference rooms and people will be like, wow, you're like a really loud breather. And Zach would, he was in Ubers, you would always point it out, I feel like. Not just Ubers. There's a, there's a specific subset of time. Because it's interesting, because you, you can breathe through your nose or you could breathe through your nose just. Just a little. little bit.

With great effort. Yeah. And generally like, um, noise. A lot of, a lot of conscious management. Yeah. And, um, when the Uber drivers start paying attention to your breathing was, interestingly, when you, uh, got those Bose noise canceling headphones, was big over your headphones, super good noise canceling.

And it would basically take away your awareness of your own breath. Yeah. And in doing so, you would relax. And then I would start breathing really hard. And it would be. Loud. It would be a little rough. And you would ever be like, are you all right back there?

And you, I think, had this experience of being like, wow, you are managing the sound of your breath at all times. At all times. Exactly. Which was an interesting thing, too, because I hadn't thought that much about my breath outside of, like, it's embarrassing to present other people with my loud breathing with my mouth. breathing, et cetera. So I had a thought about it in terms of like, can I do three counts of inhale, four counts of holding and five counts of exhale, which I certainly could not. But like, just in terms of how I, how will I be perceived by other people? And this was an awakening of being like, how am I, what am I doing to myself? So that was when I think we started having

conversations about like maybe I should go and get my nose looked at. And I actually went to a few different E&Ts in New York. And what was weird about that experience, I didn't know how to like, I feel like I was just like kind of young still and I didn't really know how to pick doctors or be just like what to look for anything like that, which we'll talk about all of that in this episode too. But they all said different things. Like one person was like you should get your turbinates reduced. Another person was like you should get a full rhinoplasty and all of it was really expensive.

And so we kind of just like filed it away as something that I should do later. And also, if I remember correctly, none of them gave you a good idea of the problem. Yeah. Like, and they all had kind of vaguely different ideas of the problem. And they also, none of them seemed confident in the problem, which was very strange. Because just to fast forward for a second, when I went and got consultations this year with E&Ts and plastic surgeons, they all said the exact same thing. Like every single person looked in my nose and immediately diagnosed the exact same case. condition. So I think I just feel really lucky that I didn't go and willy-nilly have something done

with one of these doctors in New York. You mean you didn't really nilly go have something done again? Yeah. I know this is probably how I ended up. I need to be discriminating. A lot of people, we're going to talk about the money element later too. And I think a lot of people have an instinct to like, you know, I just want to get it done quick or I just want to get it done inexpensively. And I will say if there's anything I'm going to say about elective surgery, it is do not get it done quickly and do not get it done or inexpensively, get it done properly. If that proper way to do it happens to be quick or less pricey, great, but those should not be the deciding factors with elective surgery on your body. And ideally not the deciding factors with non-elective surgery either, but I understand that sometimes we're in situations that, you know, you can't help. And with that being said, right?

I know you often tell your story of how you broke your nose in Brazil and that it was a brilliant-packed plastic surgeon. Yeah. But it was also somebody that in Brazil you had not vetted, you had no way of knowing you were too young to even understand it. But I'm sure there was a perfectly capable, excellent plastic surgeon in Brazil who was able and would have been able to basically set everything right and do everything right. Yeah, exactly. So I would just say that like do vet and I wasn't do. that in New York and I just like thank my lucky stars that I didn't end up paying for a surgery then because I have no idea what I would have ended up with and it certainly wouldn't have been

what I ended up with now. So it all just felt really, I think the reason though I decided not to do at the time was it just felt really expensive and I didn't feel like I could afford to take that plunge at that time. So we waited and then basically during the pandemic was the first time that I felt like I had enough money saved up to even be considering this again. And at the same time, it was just really coming more and more into my awareness, the negative effects of not being able to breathe fully through my nose. So you got really into breathwork, nose breathing, all of those types of things. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, I started getting really into breathwork

in I want to say March. I pictured in Tucson, yeah. Yeah, or mostly even more in Santa Fe. I pictured a lot in Santa Fe. Yeah, but also. We love in our nomad life. I do think it's funny. We demarcate time by like was it Tucson, was it Santa Fe, was it St. George?

Which is like a deeply unreliable marker because it's like five weeks, four weeks, three weeks. It's still like a pretty, if you could narrow any event in your life down to a four to five week period, it's like, okay. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. But I would say even started before that when we were just starting our nomad life and really getting into hiking.

Hiking. Yeah. And not just hiking, but hiking at altitude. Haltitude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like we're at 13,000 feet. And that was a, we worked way up to that over a period of like a number of months. But in working out up to that, I feel like you were.

And I guess, I guess there's a part of it that's like once like you're really like huffing and puffing, everybody's using their mouth. Right. And there's also the question of how much on hikes I used as an excuse. Like, well, I can't even breathe through my nose to like as a reason that I... None of us can't. As a reason that I can't hide this fast as you. Because I'm definitely, there's Zach's hiking ability and mine. And he's very nice. I have friends who describe watching their partners like disappear into the distance on a trail. You know who you are. But, and Zach does not do that, which I really appreciate. And if he does. did, I would yell at him because I'm afraid of bears. You'd yell at me, don't leave me with the bears. Don't leave me with the bears.

I remember there's one hike we did in Montana and you and our girlfriend were like walking a little bit ahead of you. A little bit at it. And I was just like, you guys don't care about me. You want me to be eaten by Grizzlies. Yeah. Yeah. So the hiking made, it did, it was the most physical fitness I've done in my life.

life up into that point. I kind of, I also like in general, I would say I became a little bit serious about working out again when I was an editor and the fitness editor pestered me enough until I started being like, wow, working out is great. Why haven't I ever done this before? But then during the pandemic, I think like a lot of people, I became very serious about working out because it became critical for my sanity since we couldn't leave our 500 square foot Brooklyn apartment. We could go for walks, but they were very crowded walks. And then, those early days, we didn't know how anything was, we didn't know anything. Most people were there for this pandemic. They know what you're talking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You might remember. So I would say, though, that as my fitness interest and working out interest increased, I became aware of the importance of breath in that way. And then in February and March, you got really into breath work. Yeah, yeah. And I was, God, getting into that was a weird thing. I think we were looking I was just talking about like I think the we were talking about spirituality

and not to go into too much but we were talking about like how to like how to like manifest spirituality as people who aren't particularly religious and we talked about like a whole bunch of stuff and anyway the long story short was I ended up like a bunch of books about breath work and to not go to too much

like James Nestor's breath like well you were reading James you were listening to James Nestor's breath for a while and you were like, you have to call me up for listening. I can read. Just because it was an audio book doesn't mean you're supposed to call out that it's nothing. You were listening to James Nestor's breath for a while and you would kind of every day

have a new fun fact about the importance of nose breathing versus mouth breathing. And if you haven't read that book, I highly, highly recommend it. But it just basically talks about how nose breathing in general is so much healthy for our body. It's better for our hormone health. It's better for inflammation. It's better for longevity. It's better for our anxiety. Like mouth breathing is both a symptom of but also a cause of anxiety. And when I found that out, it was it like unlocked something for me. Yeah. He does a really good, you know, all those things are like nose breathing is good for you in all those ways, but the alternative is also bad for you. I feel like, I feel like the fun facts you said like need to be in

scare quotes of like you were trying not to startle me with well i didn't even want remember i didn't even want to read the book because i was like is this going to just make me terrified about what i'm doing to my body because i can't mostly nose braids he has a he has a very detailed like moving section about him describing when he basically forced himself to become a mouth breather for 30 days and it i ended up braiding the book and it was like Carvine. And also I read it, this is so foolish, but I read it like after I already had my surgery scheduled. So I knew I was going to go through this period where I could not breathe. This is me. Yeah, I couldn't breathe. When you have your stents and your cast on, you cannot

breathe through your nose literally at all, which we'll get into. So let's, okay, so I became very interested in nose breathing and I guess just more aware of the detrimental effects on my whole health, my anxiety, which has been, again, a consistent issue for me for more than a decade. I became aware of those effects of nose breathing on my whole health. And so then I really, really became adamant that I needed to fix it. So I did a bunch of research and I scheduled appointments with several different people who were E&Ts. They were double certified as E&Ts, which is an ear, nose and throat doctor. They're not ornithologists.

What are they? Autolaryngologists, I think. It's like the weirdest worst. word on the planet. Yeah. But they are specialists in your nose and throat passageways, but then also in

plastic surgery and that type of surgical reconstruction of a note. So I would recommend if you are getting any sort of rhinoplasty that you look for somebody who is double certified in both of those practices, because you're just going to get the most expertise. So I got references from friends.

I also, here, I'll talk to you about, I wrote down all of like my sort of vetting process things that I kind of recommend for people. So first, double certified. I also recommend looking at their published papers and hospital affiliations. There is some sort of like privilege and class stuff going on there. So I'd never say take that as a whole picture of somebody or like where they went to college. Again, there's a lot of privileging class stuff there. But it is worth looking at it as a small part of the picture. I also recommend looking at real self, Yelp and Google reviews. Again, those could be manipulated, but it's worth looking at as a piece of the puzzle because if somebody

has a bunch of really terrible reviews, that's worth considering. With the knowledge that you didn't find anybody who didn't have a couple of people. A couple terrible. Yeah, I will say that rhinoplasty particularly has a pretty high dissatisfaction rate. It's a very hard surgery to do. And particularly mine is considered a revision rhinoplasti because it's the second time that I'm getting a surgery on my knows, and that is considered very, very difficult to do. So if it is your second time, you want to look for revision rhinoplasties specialist. You should be literally searching those words. Revision rhinoplasties

specialist. You're always going to find negative reviews. Like, it's almost a red flag if they have zero because then I would think that they had been manipulating the reviews. But you don't want a ton of negative reviews, I would say. So look at that too. And then I also like to kind of see if they're respected by their peers. So something that made me feel really good about the doctor that I chose was my dermatologist, Dr. Samantha Ellis, who I had on a previous episode of the podcast, I highly recommend that one. It's really fun. It's all about different in-office skin care treatments that you can get. But she was following Dr. Most, who is my eventual plastic surgeon, and Dr. Most was following her, and I asked her about him. And she said that she regularly sends

her patients to see him and that he's very meticulous and that she really, likes his work. So if you can find doctors that you trust, if you can get referrals from doctors that you trust, you can literally call up their offices and say, hey, this is the type of specialist that I'm looking for. Who would you recommend? That's great. And then I also like to use Instagram for that. I like to see who's following the doctors that I'm looking at and who they're following as well, because then you can really start to, I do this to vet podcast guests too. It's one of my first phases of vetting. But you can use it to really get an idea what somebody is, is about at a base level. So I, oh, and then the other thing is if they like are kind of another way to see if

they're respected by their peers is if they give talks a lot. My plastic surgeon gives talks all the time. He's, I actually am like when does he go home? Because he feels like he's literally always doing stuff. He seems very busy. So he's he's giving talks to like the American Society of plastic surgeons like really respected institutions and they are asking him to come and speak. So that's always a good sign too. And then you want to see if you like their before and after pictures, obviously because even if you're doing it for primarily functional reasons, like I was, you don't want to end up with an aesthetic result that you don't like, particularly if something is on your face. So always look at the before and after pictures and really look at them and be like,

do I actually like this? Do I like the slope of the nose? Do I like a ski jumping nose? Do I like like a straight nose, et cetera, et cetera. And then also ask how often they perform whatever surgery you're looking to get and what the revision rate is. So for instance, I interviewed a number of different doctors and one of them had a 15% revision rate and he did the surgery 150 times a year. And the surgeon that I ended up going with did the surgery 300 times a year and had a 3% revision rate. So that's a significant difference.

You really want a low revision rate and a high number of times doing the surgery. surgery every year. If you know me, you know that I am obsessed with tea. My desk at work used to have at least 20 different types of tea on it at all times and my coworkers would stop by and be like, oh, I feel a little bloated or I think I have a cold coming on and I would give them personalized tea recommendations. Now that I work from home, you can be my new co-workers. I am so excited to share one of my favorite tea brands with you, Peak. Peek's teas are really unique. They're extracted by a cold brew crystallization, a super gentle process that preserves active compounds at maximum potential. One of the things that I love most about it is you just get powdered tea,

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a handheld frother and detox book worth $45 for free. You can also get an additional 5% off on the bundle or anything else on piquetee.com slash Liz Moody using my code Liz Moody. Again, it's piquetee.com, p-I-Q-U-E-A dot com slash Liz Moody with code Liz Moody. I cannot wait for you to try this tea. Now let's get back to the episode. So I did a bunch of different consults. Weird process. The good news is, like I said earlier, all of them said the exact same thing was wrong with my nose, which is that I had a collapsed wall in the top part of it.

And then I had a double. So that made the passageway smaller for the air to go through it all. And then I had a double deviated septum. So my septum was in a z shape. So it was blocking both nostrils. So my nostrils were blocked. and they were smaller in the first place. And so every single plastic surgeon was like, you need to get the surgery done.

You will experience a huge, dramatic increase in your ability to breathe. I cannot believe you've waited this long to get this surgery. This is bananas. You have like one third of one nostril. Yeah. They were very adamant. And they all said the same thing, which made me feel really comforted. And so I picked Dr. Sam most.

He is the chief of plastic surgery at Stanford University. He is also a E&T. He's double certified. And just like he had a really, I liked his vibe. I liked the energy. I liked his affiliations. I liked his before and afterwork. I liked, like I said, that other doctors that I trusted recommended him.

He just seemed kind of like, I like that I could recover here. Honestly, that wouldn't have been. We're at Zach's parents' house right now in Berkeley. And that wouldn't have been a deciding factor for me. me, but it was really nice to not have to go to a hotel down in L.A. The other people I were interviewing was down in L.A. So, um, so that was really nice. So I had a consult and then I had a pre-op appointment. I did some sort of pre-op prep, which I'll talk about briefly. I ate a lot of pineapple. The idea is that pineapple has bromuline, which is, uh, helps with bruising and swelling and

inflammation. Some people think it's true. Some people don't. There's some loose studies to support it, but nothing very concrete. It's kind of like a you can do it. If you go on TikTok, a lot of people swear by it for surgery. So I did do it. I think the biggest thing that I probably did was I stayed in really good shape, even though I knew I wouldn't be able to work out after the surgery. That was weird. Like when I was working out up until the surgery, but I knew I was going to have to take three weeks off working out because it's like you're building muscle to not have it anymore. It makes it very acute, the idea that you're working out for the benefits, like almost right at that moment versus just like a, because you're cutting off the chain of benefits

almost. So that was an interesting psychological experience as well. And it paid off. And it paid off. So I worked out a lot and I cut out drinking two weeks before that they say to cut out drinking and smoking because both of those can affect your blood vessels, your swelling, and your ability to heal. I did not smoke, but I did cut out drinking. And what else did I do leading up to it? I ate like pretty, I ate extra clean. Low sugar.

Low sugar. Again, to kind of, anything that can help stave off inflammation, you want to do. So more of it. For me. Except for the pineapple. For me, it's, I did fibrous pineapple too versus like the juice. from my blood sugar. It's also really good.

It felt really fun and tropical islandy. I was like, I like having pineapple around. We should do this more often. Can you come out of us all the way down? I don't know. It was fun and sassy. Anything you can do to kind of really cut down on inflammation.

Oh, and I started drinking bone broth. And I continued to drink bone broth through out after my surgery. And to this day, and I'll talk about the stuff I did that I think helped the most post-surgery. But bone broth is very, very, very high on my list. Bone broth was half the cough. of the surgery.

It just, it really was, so it makes you, it makes me feel really like grounded and satiated and nourished, but also it has a lot of, it's basically the idea is it's like leaching nutrients from bones. That's what it's made from. So it has a lot of those protein building blocks that you need to create new tissue to create new bone mass, to create new cartilage, et cetera, basically to heal your body. And it just, it felt, it felt like I was nourishing myself. I was actually recovering from an exercise-based injury at about this time.

And it was really nice to have like sap bone broth off Liz's supply, which I didn't have to go refill. And I had quite a supply. But yeah, it's not something that we've kept in the house a lot because it is pricey. Or like just time consuming to make yourself. Or time consuming. We used to make it ourselves. We had a kick or we made it ourselves all the time. And it is time to.

But it's honestly worth it to make it yourself too. Okay. So let's talk about. So the night before surgery, we went and stayed at a hotel in Palo Alto. It was really fun and really nice. And was the right idea because Bay Area traffic to get you to a surgery is not like the move. No, it was, yeah, we had to be there at seven or six. It was like we left when it was dark and we got there when the sun was coming up.

Yeah, we left. We had to be there very, very, very early in the morning. And so I didn't sleep at all the night before you, do you slap, right? Yeah. Okay. I slept literally not at all. And I kind of didn't expect to. But it was a little fun to be in a hotel.

We went out to eat at the restaurant, which was called Roger. The hotel was called Ameswell. I'll highly recommend if you're ever in like the Palo Alto Bay Mountain View type area. Super cute. It was super cute. They gave us a really nice suite, actually, which was really lovely. And it just felt fun. It felt like we were making it celebratory instead of, I don't know,

like marching to our my doom you know i got a really good bacon egg cheese sandwich when i got back from dropping you off it was great i'm so glad i'm so glad i'm so glad anyways i didn't sleep it all the night before we drive to the surgery place that drops me off because he it's a long surgery i was like you know what eight hours or something oh it's also because they're really strict covid protocols and they strict covid protocols so you drop me off and i went inside and it was just It was such a weird experience. I was so nervous.

And they're like taking your vitals and you had to spray aphrine up into your nose. Like, think three or four times. You do it every 15 minutes, three times, I think, before you actually go get on the operating table. Yeah, I don't think I've told you about that yet. So you're just like sprayed aphrine up your nose. They're asking you questions, taking your blood pressure, whatever. You're just kind of sitting there in this cold room. And then the weirdest part for me was that you walk into the surgical room, like you walk into it and lay down on the table yourself on your own volition.

Like you're not wielding. I don't know. It just felt so like, please harvest my organs. Like it felt so griefy to me that action of laying down on the table. And I just remembered every single step in the process. Even though I was making my consult appointments when I was paying for it, my every, like, the COVID test that I took before, every single step of the way, I just was like, just do the next thing, just do this one next thing, just do this one next thing. And I kind of to this day,

can't believe that just doing that one next thing ended up with me actually going through it because I was so scared. And I do think it's a good way to approach, I guess, scary stuff is just don't think about the whole thing. It's just just do this one next thing. So when I walked in, I was like, just sit down. And even when I was getting on the operating of it, I was like, just lay down on the table. Like, don't think about happen. And then I even asked them. I was like, does anybody ever just like get up and leave at this point?

And they were like, nope, that's never happened. And I was like, doesn't mean it never will. I could be special in that way. I could be special in that way. And then the anesthesiologist who is really nice, he asked me, I told him I was really scared. And he was like, what are your fears? And I was like, that you'll kill me. He was like, I've never done that before.

And I was like, that's great to know. He's also my surgeon said, and I don't know if he just says this, but he said that this anesthesiologist put his own daughter under. So that was supposed to make me feel better. And it did, even if it was a lie. And then the anesthesiologist said, because I was so scared that he would give me an anti-anxiety thing in my IV. And I was like, sounds great. Love it. And he was like, okay, I'm just going to put that in now.

And that's the last thing I remember. And to this day, I don't know if he put an anti-anxiety thing in and it just, I disassociated, don't remember. Or if he lied and he put in the anesthesia. I think that you were just so tired from not sleep in the night before that you just like literally lay down. The second I relaxed. You were prone and your buddy is like, eh. I'm so sleepy. I don't know what it was.

And because I've had anesthesia before. I've had two shoulder surgeries in my life. And I distinctly remember them being like, you're going to count back from 100 and me being like, I don't feel tired at all. I'm going to probably get to one and have to start over again. And then you get to like 98 and fall asleep. Like I remember that feeling so distinctly. And this is nothing like that. He was like, okay, we put the anti-anxiety stuff in. And then I woke up. And it was so trippy. I was, I woke up and I was, I think, was I laying or sitting. Were you there when I woke up? I don't remember. What happened when I woke up? Well, so I get a call. And they were like,

the surgery is complete. What time was it? Like, you dropped me off at seven. Yeah, I dropped me of like 6.30, 7 a.m. whatever. Late, it was late in the afternoon. Like three or four. Yeah, yeah. Which is bananas because I, like, I just.

Yeah, you're younger because of it, you know. I don't think it works like that. No. I wish. Maybe I'm younger because of my new hot nose. Fair enough. We love talking about our gut health here on the Healthy Together podcast, which is why I'm so excited to share the life-changing seed daily symbiotic.

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seeds daily symbiotic. Again, that's code Liz Moody on seed.com. Now, let's get back to the episode. So yeah, I got a call and they were like, Liz is out of surgery. And I was like, did it go well and they're like it went great and I was like so good they're like and you can come by in like 45 minutes to an hour and I was like oh oh okay great I'm like I'm like I'm 10 minutes away can I just come down and I'm like no don't um so I rock up like 40 minutes later and come in and they give me all these aftercare instructions before you saw me no no during me seeing you So what did, okay, so what did you think when you first saw me? Were you like, this chick is beat?

I mean, I don't know what I expected, but like, there was blood and like obvious stitches. And it was a little like face Frankensteiny and the old nose region. Like were you, were you like, did you think, did I, I don't know, was it like unattractive, I guess? I don't think we need to talk about it in terms of attractiveness because it doesn't look, it doesn't look. it doesn't like look normal. It's not like, you're not like, oh, that's a really ugly way to look like you got punched in the face with a sledgehammer. Like it was, it was very, of course it was jarring.

But the funny part was like, you're there cracking jokes. And you're like, you're deeply complimentary. I don't remember any of this. Two nurses who are like taking care of you. You're cracking jokes about our sex life. You're cracking jokes about everything. And it was, it was heartwarming. And it's actually kind of fun because...

Did I seem loopy, though? Or did I seem like my normal self? It's like your, I mean, it's like your normal, no filter self, but on steroids. Like kind of how I'm drunk? Yeah. Okay. It seemed like you were, although honestly a little less sloppy than when you're like really drunk like that. Interesting.

You know, hey, there's like a... I want to try it out sometime. No, it was actually really comforting because you were cogent. You were, like, you were very like, um. It was like, she's still in there. You were, no, you were very gregarious and joking, but you were like deeply cogent. You were still deeply cogent. And like you were like making sense.

It just felt like you had no filter on at all. But the weirdest part is that I don't remember it at all. Like, that's the weird. It's weird that I was like fully cogent, fully like joyful, happy, whatever, but I don't remember it at all. Right. And it's because, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, waking up, your body's like coming back to reality. And, but it was really, it was really reassuring, actually, because, like, you know,

I'm like, oh, God, are you okay? And you're like, yeah, you know, got some blood on me doing my thing. So then they gave him aftercare instructions. And then we drove home. It was about an hour drive back to Berkeley. We listened to an episode of You're Wrong About. And I actually, when we went to get my cast off, we listened to the second half of the episode and I was like, oh, I remember the first half of the episode. So that felt good. I had some

pineapple juice in the car. I was really nervous about not being able to eat in the morning because blood sugar used to be a huge anxiety trigger for me. So I wanted to have some sort of like juice or something in my body as quickly as possible. So I had some pineapple juice in the car. I had my squish mallow in the car with me. Also for context, my nose was in a cast. There were stitches and all that, but also because of the type of surgery, I had, I had a rib graft rhinoplasty. So they took some of my rib cartilage. And remember when I was talking about the collapsed wall, they used that rib cartilage, which is the strongest cartilage in the body, I believe. People will also talk to you about cadaver cartilage. The disadvantage of that is that your body is more likely to reject it. And then

ear cartilage, which I believe is just a little bit weaker. Don't quote me on that, but I believe that's what my surgeon's opinion on it is. And rib cartilage, it's more painful to harvest, but it's really, really, really strong. So you won't run into issues with your nose collapsing down the line. So they had harvested my rib and use that cartilage and use that to build my nose wider. So in addition to my recovery being about what was going on in my face, it really was and has continued to be about recovering from this like two to three inch incision I had below my boob. Which I didn't really realize at the time they gave me no care instructions on. So I had to like call later and I was like, what do I do about the rain?

And they're like nothing. It has like a magical band-aid slash stitch slash like they had some cool name for it that I'm sure medical people on who are listening to this. No exactly what I'm talking about. But like it's like a healing band-aid. It like takes care of everything and it like fell off three weeks later. and you have a very, there's some scar tissue, but it's like a very clean, healed incision, just like done. So we got home and the first day I actually did not feel too terrible.

Like I remember you hung out in bed with me. We watched some sex in the city. I was talking. I think I drank some bone broth. My throat was really sore from the breathing tube. But other than that, I felt like there was some pretty good spirits. And then I slept super well that night, which everybody says it's super hard to sleep because you can't get comfortable. you can't breathe through your nose at all.

And that makes it really hard to sleep. But I actually slept incredibly well during my whole recovery. What I think you should talk about your sleeping setup because it was like a production. Yeah, I had a wedge pillow that I'll link in the show notes, but it kind of makes you sitting almost all the way up. And then I don't usually, I'm a side in belly sleeper. So in the months leading up to the operation, I got, I was very nervous about sleeping on my back. And I kind of got around it by I had a pillow on either. side of me and I kind of put my arms there and they made it so I couldn't roll over. And then I had

this wedge pillow propping me up. So I was sleeping almost upright. It was almost like you made like a recliner chair out of... In a bed. Yeah. Yeah. In a bed. Yeah. And then I had my barefoot dreams blanket, which was really cozy and comforting. And then I had my squish mallow, which was also an MVP of surgery because I would hold my squish mull. He's the walrus. His name is Walter. If you don't know what a squish mallow is, it's a very plush stuffed animal, like very plush. plush. My sister uses them in her, she's a psychologist, uses them for therapy. And I tried one out at her house and I was like, this is wonderful. They're like made it a memory. They're like a soft memory home. And then she gave me one for my birthday and his name is Walter and he's a walrus. And I would

hold him against my rib whenever I moved and it made it hurt less. So he ended up being like a real surgery recovery MVP. When I worked as a magazine editor, I wrote more than a thousand articles about turmeric because pretty much all of the doctors that I used his sources kept recommending it. or citing it is one of the supplements that they would personally take. Here's the background. Turmeric is one of the most powerful ways to fight inflammation. In a nutshell, there are two types of inflammation, acute and chronic. Acute inflammation can actually be a good thing.

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and code Liz M for 15% off your order. And if you have any questions, feel free to hit me up on Instagram. I love chatting about this stuff. Now let's get back to the episode. So I don't get too long into this because I feel like this, we're getting lengthy here, but The recovery was better than I expected in terms of my sleep. I slept almost all the time. I just feel like I mostly slept. But it was worse that I expected in almost like every other way. Like it was not physically painful except for my rib, which did hurt quite a bit.

It felt like I don't know if you ever broken a rib or something like that, but it was pretty stabby, severe pain my rib whenever I moved. But I felt completely wiped out, so tired. at the time. I did not end up actually getting out of bed for the first seven days, except for to use the bathroom. I ate in bed. And when I did use the bathroom, I felt so weak. I had to kind of like hold on to the bathroom sink to like steady myself. I felt really dizzy and lightheaded all the time. I don't know if that was because of the medicine or the ear, nose and throat thing of having your nose completely clogged. And you can't breathe through your nose all, but I felt really dizzy and lightheaded all the time. And I also felt so.

super nauseous, which we identified later as being because of the antibiotics. We thought it was because I was a norco for pain meds. Vicon, vicon for pain meds. And when I stopped taking those, I thought that my nausea would go away and it didn't go away until I stopped my antibiotics. So I was on a pretty powerful antibiotic because they don't want you to get any sort of infection after surgery. That's the biggest risk by far. But I was so nauseous all the time. And trying, one of the biggest challenges post-surgery was eating enough food to take all of my medicine. It's really hard to eat when you can't breathe through your nose at all. One, you can't really taste anything. Somebody asked if I lost my sense of smell and taste, and the answer is, like, mostly. You have,

for smell and taste, you have on your tongue the basic flavor, so like sweet, salty, bitter, sour. But then what your sense of smell does is it adds nuance and flavor to all of those basic taste. And so I could taste like when something was like sweet or salty, but I couldn't taste any nuance or depth or like anything beyond that. And it made it really hard to want to eat because everything just tastes so unpalatable. And I would say it's only even been within the last few days that I've started to get that back. And that's still not completely back. And that was very trippy and very disconcerting. But yeah, we did a lot of liquid foods, a lot of bone broth, a lot of smoothie, a lot of soft scrambled eggs. Really, I was just trying to eat enough

to take all of my medicine. I was just wiped out, tired. I felt like my nose felt like the feeling you get when you get water up your nose when you go swimming and it just kind of like tingles and it's really uncomfortable. It's not painful, but it just was uncomfortable from the inside out. And so I just laid in bed. I watched sex in the city. I tried not to throw up because I was terrified of throwing up with my nose and messing up any of the work that my surgeon had done. And then Zach took care of me. Yeah.

And I mean, and that is the kind of the physical day to day in a lot of ways. But there was also like a very real, I think, emotional tool, which you made me remind you. to talk about later. Yeah, to tell you to remember to. Okay. Which was basically, and no one should have let you do this, but you were, you started watching, I say no one, I mean me. You started watching a lot of like people's no-job like vlogs. Apparently that's a whole subcategory of vlogs.

Yeah. And I remember you and you're on like day two or three or four. I think day two or three or four were like the hardest days. And I remember you just being, like, distraught, like on the edge of, like, you know, tears, but, like, not feeling like you had the freedom to cry less you, like, you know, blow your nose out or something. Yeah. And you were like, whatever you do, don't let me do this podcast without covering the fact that everybody online's a liar. And I was like, everybody, and you're like, everybody.

They're all liars. And you showed me some of these no jobs And it's like people like Five days out They well they do like day one like oh we're driving home I look silly blah blah blah blah and then they're like And then it was just me healing and then schmuh And you're like they do not capture the

Like deep feeling of I guess Discomfort Yeah true pain it's because it's not pain it's not pain it's not pain Pain's other. But when people say that it's not painful, it's just uncomfortable, you're like, oh, I can deal with that. But no, it's discomfort to such an extreme level. Like there were days I was like, was this insane. I shouldn't have done this. It was the most uncomfortable week of my life, far and away. And I say this is somebody who is agoraphobic and bed bound with anxiety that was so

physically uncomfortable that I had thoughts that I don't want to get into here. And this, that week was the most uncomfortable week of my life. Can you pull back up those feelings? Yeah, I can. I can. They're not fresh. And I think this is why people say they don't regret their surgeries later is because as the pain diminishes and just the results kind of creep in, you are like, oh, yeah,

that was definitely worth it. But that week in those moments, I would have traded almost anything. really to just be able to even breathe a teeny tiny bit through my nose for a second. I thought I'd be fine with that because I was like, I haven't breathed through my nose in 10 years. But just that little bit of breathing I was doing through my nose kept me sane in such a way that having all ability to do that taken away from me. It just drove me absolutely crazy. And I don't know. I just felt so to feel like trapped in your own body is a very weird sensation.

And to feel like you've gotten into something you can't get out of. I remember feeling that too. like I had made the choice to have the surgery. You can't just undo it. You now have done the surgery and you have to heal. Right. I remember you saying something like like everybody was saying to me, oh, like your nose won't like hurt that much.

Your rib's going to hurt. Yeah. It's going to hurt to get out of bed. And you're like, yeah, my rib hurts. But like I definitely feel like I was misled. Yeah. In the level of and you're saying the word discomfort. But at the time, I think you were saying more like just how much this hurts, how much this sucks, how much this.

Like, it's just like my face feels deeply off. And so does just like my entire being and experience and everything else like that. And that you you would have still, you're like, I think I would have still done this. But it feels like a, it felt like a little bit of like a societal betrayal. Yeah. That like it wasn't spelled out for you. What I was getting into. Yeah.

Yeah. Because you feel like. And I think, and a lot of those vlogs were like people out partying with their friends and stuff. Like after like like five days. Again, I didn't feel like I could get out of bet. I had a post-op appointment at six days. And that's when they took. And literally the only way I got to that appointment was being on Sunday night.

My post-op was Tuesday on Sunday night. I was like, I can call them Monday and ask them to remove these stents early. And that's how I got through Sunday night. And then Monday I was like, you already made it to Monday. Just make it to Tuesday. Like I was talking myself through moment by Monday. moment hour by hour of this. It also feels like something's like expanding in your nose. Like your nose feels trapped in the cast and the stents are like shoved up in the nose. It was terrible.

So, but I couldn't get out of bed until we had to physically go to the doctor to get the stents removed. And even then I felt dizzy. I barely like made it into the office. And then I came back and I, my, my recovery immediately started going uphill or down. It got better after that moment but for the whole first week I literally just laid in bed naked feeling terrible like just sucking on bone broth which is a to remind to say this it wasn't just like a cosmetic nose job right like those these things are poor but even if you get a cosmetic nose job which I'm not against for any reason but I do think you should know what you're getting into although oh I mean mine was like a harder recovery in terms of severity yeah more work was done I will say that too

is I think that some if you have just a solely, I don't mean to scare anybody. If you have a solely like just fixing a bump or something or not. I don't think it will be this bad. I think it was the fact that they were like reducing terminates and moving my septum and then grafting a rib on made my recovery a lot more intense. So six days out, they take your cast off. They take the steds out, which everybody was like, that's going to be crazy. I guess there's like a lot of TikToks about it.

I was going to go and make a TikTok and she wouldn't let me. I'm sorry to everybody. They, but that wasn't that crazy. The crazy thing is they take this suction thing, like the thing they would use to suck your mouth when you're like getting your teeth cleaned at the dentist. It's basically something that looks like that. And they shove it all the way up your nose, like all the way. Like if you've had a PCR COVID test, that's how far up your nose they go. But it's with a suction thing. And it's horrifying. And I screamed. And I was like, are you taking my brain out with that thing? What are you doing? And it's so funny because my doctor was just like, what's. the big deal? Like, why are you reacting like this? And then everybody I've talked to online about this has been like, I shrieked. It was horrified. I'm like, why are all the doctors out there acting like this is like I was the only person ever on the planet to react like it was crazy. But it was insane. But then I immediately being able to breathe through my nose at all. And he removed all my stitches, except for a few inside ones that will dissolve, immediately felt so much better.

And I will say, then your nose swells up a lot and gets really puffy. And I, I looked, I kept saying like a troll doll, which Zach didn't think I looked like a troll doll. It's actually really funny because you, you, it's really funny how when we, I'm sure everybody's experiences, like when we see people like minute to minute to minute, like it's, you don't clock the changes. Yeah. But looking back at those photos, like you, I look so your nose looks like a it doesn't look like the right size for my face. Yeah. And so you're like, you have this like few minutes of great breathing and then it just swells and looking great and then it swells up again being out of the cast and then I just kind of slowly I still spent a lot of days in bed and getting

my energy back. I'm not allowed to work out for three weeks which it'll be the day this podcast comes out comes out will be three weeks and three weeks is really when you can kind of start going back to your normal life and six weeks is when you can really start going back to your normal life. We're up to 14,000 feet in three weeks. Yeah. On Wednesday. Wait what? What? Oh no, no, no, no. No, no, no. but yeah it was terrible I think I'm still happy I did it but it was again if you'd ask me that four or five days in I don't know if I would be also I keep feeling the intense I don't know if this is Freudian or not and I was then too I just want to like smack my nose around a little bit like it's like it feels like a forbidden urge oh yeah yeah well it is I just want to like wiggle my nose and

I know you're not allowed to do that okay I wanted to say a few other things that I found helpful in recovery and then I'm going to answer a few questions. So we talked about my wedge pillow, which I'll link a humidifier, critical. This is actually one of the most uncomfortable things that I almost forgot to talk about, which is your throat gets so sore, at least mine did, because I was only breathing through my mouth all night. I woke up and my mouth felt so like papery and dry and cotton-coated and just absolutely disgusting. And my throat hurt so bad. But, both, I think, from swallowing all of the mouth bacteria that I got from mouth breathing all night, but also just from the, it never recovered from the breathing tube and then from breathing in dry air all night.

So the humidifier, I have canopy humidifier that helped a lot. And then a tongue scraper. I tongue scraped obsessively because my tongue just felt so disgusting. Like I cannot overstate how gross my mouth felt. So that was really helpful. Hot honey water was immensely helpful with soothing my throat. you made me hot honey water all the time. I realized the secret was to just keep adding honey until it couldn't take more honey.

It's wonderful. Here for it. My bone broth, which I've already shouted out a million times, the peak daily radiance packets, they're vitamin C elderberry packets, and I would just like suck on them. They felt really good on my throat. And then also vitamin C, there's some really great studies about how that helps post-surgery and pre-surgery with your body healing itself, which makes sense, because if you consume vitamin C, it helps build collagen in your body.

So love those. Love my green smoothies. Love my simple modern sippy cup. I put ice water in that, like really cold ice water, which again just helped my sore throat so much. My throat was incredibly sore for the whole first week and then somewhat sore, I'd say, for the second and even third week. I do like that you ordered a new sippy cup with like a cooler aesthetic to like help get you through the whole situation. And it keeps the water really, really cold and has a nice straw. so you don't have to like lift anything up to drink from it.

Ice packs. I see, obviously there's icing constantly. It helped with both the pain. And then also it's supposed to be very good for swelling. And then my Juv red light therapy, which I didn't do it all during the first week. But then I started doing it after it because again, I literally, literally, I can't overstate how much I did not get out of bed. You did it before too.

No, I didn't. Oh, before the surgery? Yeah. Yeah, I did before surgery. And then I did it after the first week. And I think that that helped a lot. my bruising went away very quickly. Oh, and I took these supplements called Heal Fast.

I can also link these in the show notes. It's hard to say when you're doing a bunch of different things for something, like to isolate one variable that worked, but I liked the ingredients of the supplement. They're really designed for injury healing and post-surgery healing. So I like those as well. I don't know. Friends, I am so excited about this mid-roll.

It's been literally years in the making. Basically, I have struggled with my allergies forever. I'm allergic to my cat, Bella, and to pollen, and to a bunch of other things. Basically, I'm drippy and itchy all the time. When I was working in the magazine world, I told one of my editor friends about how I would wake up everyday sneezing, and she told me about a miracle air purifier she had. She'd found it when reviewing a bunch of different air purifiers for a story, and she said that it changed her life.

It is the only one that I can legitimately tell a difference when I forget to run it at night, she told me. I looked into it, and while I was tempted, the air purifier was very much. very pricey. So I got another one, a top-rated one, and I kept waking up sneezing with red, puffy eyes. Finally, this year, after a summer spent in Montana wildfire smoke and my surgery right around the corner, I was and I still am terrified to sneeze, I caved and I got an aeroside. And you guys, it has changed my life. Aerocide was developed for NASA and uses proprietary technology to remove 99.9% of smoke, allergens, VOCs, mold, and bacteria from the air with absolutely

no ozone or byproducts. It can literally catch things that go right through even the best hepa filter, and it is FDA certified as a Class 2 medical device, which means that surgeons can use it in their operating rooms to create a sterile environment. It's super easy to set up. You just plug it in and turn it on, and it requires low maintenance. You just change out the reaction chamber once a year. And it actually looks super chic like a very modern sleek design and it takes up way less space than any other air purifier that I've had. But you guys, I genuinely, genuinely haven't woken up with itchy eyes or a runny nose since I got this thing and I used to wake up with itchy eyes and a runny nose every single day. On smoky days in Montana, it took our inside air from hazardous

to completely clean. Sack actually has this like air quality tester that we travel with. It is just, it's literally a miracle and I cannot believe it. This is one of those products that I was so obsessed with that I bugged them until they wanted to partner, mostly so that I could give you guys a code because like I said, the one drawback is definitely the price. But they gave me the most generous code. You can use Liz 600 to get $600 off any of the air purifiers on their website. I personally have the APS 200 PM 2.5, but they just released the ARIA, which is even cuter and has an even lower price point. So that's probably what I would go for if I were yo. I know it's a splurge,

but it genuinely has made the biggest difference for my allergies and being able to breathe again is just, it's truly priceless. Also, it's kept me from sneezing and having to face my biggest post-surgery fear, which is also priceless. Again, that's code Liz 600 on AeroSide.com, A-I-R-O-C-I-D-E-D-com for $600 off. Let me know if you get one. I cannot wait to hear how much it helps. Okay. And then a few questions. How did I discuss with friends slash loved ones?

I was pretty unapologetic about it. I don't know. Like I didn't receive an apology. I just was kind of like, this is what I'm doing. I kind of don't think other people should comment on your bodily choices, whether they're aesthetic or functional or anything like that. So I kind of was just like, this is what I'm doing. But at the same time, you are so generally open as a person about your rationale for doing stuff. I think you could give everybody an idea of why you were doing stuff and what you wanted to get out of it.

And it wasn't just like a, I'm going in. Peace. Yeah. And I actually ended up being really happy that I was so open about it because then as we've started to see friends again, I haven't had to like hide anything or explain anything. or explain anything. It's been really nice to just have all of my cards on the table. People have to say, cute nose. Yeah.

So that's been good. Somebody asked if I had an identity crisis when the bandages came off. I didn't. I feel like I don't really identify with my looks. Like I look different in my head than I ever feel like I do in pictures or the mirror or anything like that. So I don't, I feel almost like a little disassociated with my looks. But it's also hard because you don't. really see the final results for so long. So you kind of like get a glimpse of your nose in the

mirror, but you have to tell yourself like this is not the final nose. So I shouldn't criticize it or compliment it or anything like that. I should just kind of like live and let live with it. So basically after it takes like four to six weeks to start to really get an initial vibe of what your nose is going to look like for all the swelling to go down. And then it takes a year for the swelling to completely go down and to have like the final shape of your nose. So for me, I think I was saying this at the top of the episode, but it's just really been an exercise in letting go of control in trusting the process and in being like there's nothing I can do now. So I see it in the mirror, but I try not to be too attached to it or to attach to the overall outcome with it. But it does look cute.

But Zach thinks that it does look cute. Somebody says, does the doctor show you an idea before? Is it a total surprise? Every single doctor I visited did like a morph where they could. computer generated what they thought my nose should look like. They all looked pretty much the exact same. And also, all of them will have a conversation with you about like, what's your priority between aesthetic and functionality? And I said, far and away, my preference was to prioritize functionality. And if we had to sacrifice aesthetic to get to me breathing better, again,

because I just internalized all these reasons. I was going to like have all these negative outcomes from my mouth breathing. I was just like, please let me not mouth breathe anymore. more. So they all looked pretty much the same though. So I felt like I was kind of going to get the same nose no matter what. Number one question, how much did it cost? I don't want to say exactly how much I paid because I just feel like I'll be bombarded with all sorts of opinions and comments. But I will say that for a top doctor, you can expect to pay between 10 and 15,000 for a first rhinoplasties. So that would be if it's your first one. But if you're getting a revision, which is again what I had to do because of my whole situation,

I would expect to pay between 20 and 30,000 for a revision rhinoplasti from a top doctor. Well, and what about the insurance thing? Yeah, so insurance would pay for part of my surgery because basically every ENT confirmed that I definitely couldn't breathe through my nose, that I have a deviated septum, et cetera, et cetera. So those are all things that are covered. But what they basically cover is the lowest price you can get a rhinoplasty in the United States. States from. So I think it was like $3,000 or something like that. And then beyond that, a lot of surgeons, my own surgeon included, have two different facilities that they do surgeries at.

They have like a private office and then they have a hospital affiliated one. And the one at the hospital is the one that's covered by insurance. And that one costs more for the hospital than the private facility. And this is not something that's unique to rhinoplasties. It's actually something that's a whole New York Times article. There's a really, really interesting. I mean, this would be, anybody who's interested, it's worth at Google on just the difference between what hospitals, medical facilities, et cetera, et cetera, charge insurance providers and what they charge private and why it's a difference and why even with insurance, you can end up paying more because that was, we ended up not using

our quite decent insurance. Insurance. Because it would have literally cost me more. Because it would have more out of pocket for us. Yeah. So even though insurance would have paid for like $3,000 to $5,000 of it or whatever, I would have actually ended up paid more out of pocket because of the different facility charges. And I don't know, it was really confusing to me. I had them explain it to me like five times. I didn't really get it.

But Zach said that it made sense. It makes sense in like a health care in this country is. Has a lot of problems. Yeah. It's hard. Issued. Yeah, I know. It's hard especially after living in Europe where like I remember the first time I went

to the doctor in England. And I was like hovering at the desk afterwards being like, do you want my co-pay? And they were just like, leave. But yeah, so I ended up not going with insurance. And also if I went through insurance in this other facility, I would have had to wait until March to get the surgery. And I would have ended up paying more. So I didn't pay with insurance even though I would have been covered by insurance,

if that makes sense. And I'm, as of like, right. now, I actually can breathe through my nose better today than I have been able to pretty much any day up until now. Like today, I feel a pretty drastic difference, at least in one nostril. The swelling changes day to die. My nose literally looks different day to day. So that's really interesting. But I'm just kind of in the wait and see mode to find out how my breathing is going to be. The surgeon said that it was a very successful operation. Everybody I've talked to have actually been lucky enough because people see on Instagram who my surgeon was.

And then I have people who follow me on Instagram and they'll reach out and be like, oh, I had my surgery done with Dr. Most a year ago, two years ago, six months ago. I had one woman who had her surgery a few weeks ahead of mine. And she's been keeping me up to date on all of the healing steps of her process. Bless her, because like, and has helped your mental health in a way that's helped my mental health. And yeah. She's been amazing. So everybody I've talked to has said their breathing has been immeasurably better. They are so happy with their results. I'm not quite there yet. I'm very excited to be there. So I will keep you all updated as we see what happens. But I'm happy with how

it looks so far. I don't look like a troll doll anymore. I don't think. And I'm happy with the idea that I might be able to breathe someday. And I definitely feel like I'm over the healing hump where I feel like myself again, I feel like I have my energy back. My rib still twinges and hurts, especially when I roll over in the middle of the night. I've been sleeping hugging Walter against my rib, and I just kind of, again, hold him over. When I'm rolling over in the middle of the night, I'm still sleeping, not on my crazy wedge pillow set up, but elevated on two pillows. But it's getting better every day, and I definitely feel like I've crossed over a hump. Do you have any final, like, thoughts on?

Killimanjaro 22 I don't know I mean is it weird for you to look at me and have my face be different Oh yeah And actually it's one of those things Where it's been kind of a joy To be so close to it

That like it All the changes are actually working in real time And I haven't ever dealt with this like monster Jarring Shock Yeah even even out of surgery, so much of it was even covered. So it's like, I got like these like baby step looks at like what the shape might be

and all this other kind of stuff. But yeah, I mean, honestly, I think it looks great now. And I kind of was also like, oh, like, you look great without a cast. And then I was like, no, no, it is really swollen. But is it like, I think a lot of people were curious if you would feel like, I don't know, like you were robbed of the woman that you married or like you still knew me or. anything like that. You know what I mean?

Do you have any of those moments? Or did you have those concerns or fears before surgery? I did not. And honestly, like, I think like a lot of people within kind of your greatest social room were like, I think your nose looks cute now. But it did also look broken, right? Like it looked kind of like a like a cute like lady Owen Wilson type of situation. Not.

That's a lot. I'm joking. But like it clearly had like some scar tissue. You could see where it. you could see where it's deviated, but it was also, it was, it was part of, of your character and who you are. And, you know, that is an okay thing to, to change and to come to terms with a change. I think looking at you now, you look closer to the photos I think I've seen of you as a kid or, or as like a teenager and like, like, pre the board. But I also, I would say that through this whole process, something that, like, has been very much solidified. for me is you're not like obviously you want to be attracted to your partner and I think when you meet your partner so much of what you're attracted to is how they look but I've been reminded so many times

throughout this process how much what we've built is just so far beyond anything aesthetic and I felt very supported in my journey of like you want me to be my best self and my best self includes breathing And I kind of even think if I'd felt like my best self aesthetically was different, you would have supported that. I think you just like want me to feel my best every day rather than me to look a certain way for your viewing pleasure. For my viewing pleasure. The nose is a footnote in like a very like big complicated whole relationship. Yeah. We could talk all night about exactly how it looks, but it's also like it could be.

numerous degrees of different from how it is now and how it was before and everything else. And you'd still be you and I'd still recognize you as you and I'd still have all the thoughts and feelings and love I have for you then. And I would say that's kind of my feeling on plastic surgery in general, especially from an aesthetic perspective, is that if friends or family members are like, you can't change this, how will you still feel like you? My main response would be that's not who I am. Like my looks aren't who I am and particularly like a certain feature isn't who I am. But at the same time, that goes both ways because if you're changing your looks are a certain feature and expecting it to change who you are, I think you're going to be disappointed. So I think for better,

for worse, for every reason, it is looks. And that's what it is. And it's a small facet of who we are overall as people. So that was my rhinoplasty journey. If you're interested in photos before's afters in the moments. I got a lot of in the moments. We have some fun in the moment. I got to say, so I have a, I have like, what do you got to say? I have Google photos on my phone and they make these collages. Oh, yeah.

And it, the number of times it was like, do you want a fun collage? I made you a recent memory. And it's like, like all of the photos I'm taking of Liz like in like cute little like collage frames. Oh. Thank you, Google. Have a mosaic. Thank you so much.

If you would like to see photos, I will be sharing those on Instagram. So head over to Atlas Moody to check those out. And I hope this was helpful. If you have any more questions, obviously hit me up on Instagram. I'm happy to answer any I try to get to as many DMs as I can, although obviously it would be impossible to get to all of them. And I will be back next week with a healthy cooking secrets holiday edition, which I'm very, very excited about.

So is the secret vanilla extract. Oh, there's so many more secrets that there's, there's many secret secrets to hostessing to fun dishes, all of that kind of stuff. So I will see you guys all next week. Love you guys. I hope you have a great day. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years. And I am so obsessed with it. I've been telling all of my friends to get it.

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