From Botched Nose to Perfection: Angelica’s Revision Rhinoplasty

Kerry: Hello, welcome to Once Upon a Surgery. I’m the host Kerry Berlet, wife of world-renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Anthony Berlet. We’re here to spill the tea over plastic surgery. And today specifically, we’re going to talk about botched plastic surgery.

Kerry: Today I have my beautiful guest, the young, lovely Angelica. She is actually an influencer, and she has been through quite a journey. I really am ready to do a deep dive into her experience and everything she’s been through. And I just want to say thank you, Angelica, for coming to Once Upon a Surgery. I’m so happy to have you. Cheers.

Kerry: All right. So talk to me. You had a youth where you were in the spotlight, right? And you were unhappy with your nose, and I want to hear about when that started and what your journey was like when you made a decision to take action.

Angelica: So, I always had a cute little button nose. The side profile was that perfect little slope that you always want. Then somewhere around 12, 13, 14, well, it was a slope indeed. It was a slope that way.

Kerry: So somehow it just grew at that age.

Angelica: Yes, because of puberty. My nose started getting bigger and wider, with a bulbous tip, and I was a little self-conscious about it. I wanted to get it fixed. And I had gotten my ears done. I was born with a deformity in my ears. So I got them fixed, and they came out great. I was happy with them. So I figured a year later I’m going to go to the same surgeon.

Kerry: Because you trusted him.

Angelica: I trusted him. I thought he did a great job. I thought he had great bedside manner, and I decided to get my nose done.

Kerry: And were your parents supportive of this?

Angelica: Well, my mom always had a really beautiful nose, and that’s my mother, so I looked up to her. So I mentioned to them I wanted to get my nose done, and they were very supportive about it. So I went to him, we went over the plan, I showed some inspiration pictures.

Kerry: And how old were you at that point?

Angelica: 15. And so I woke up from surgery, and my mom told me that it went 3 hours longer. The doctor had come out and said he needed more money, because I was using the operating room longer.

Kerry: So they had to give him cash to stay in the room longer? Wow. I didn’t know it worked like that.

Angelica: I didn’t have any red flags. There wasn’t an excessive amount of bleeding or bruising. It looked fine in the cast. I got the cast taken off, and most people would think my reaction would be, oh my, I’m botched. But no, I was like, I’m swollen. I prepared myself for this. I watched a lot of videos, because it’s usually a journey when you have a rhinoplasty. They said don’t freak out, it’s swollen. When you get the cast off, that’s not how it’s going to look.

Angelica: So they put the tape on, and I went back a week later, and he took the tape off. The first thing I said was, “I look like a cat. I look like a cat.” I turned to the side, I’m looking in the mirror.

Kerry: So it’s like a mush? You know how cats have that rectangle nose?

Angelica: Yes. And on the left side, it was kind of caving in a little. I didn’t have any breathing problems.

Kerry: So it was still functional, but just kind of malformed.

Angelica: Yes. And from a side profile, it was very flat-like.

Kerry: And before it was bulbous. It went from bulbous to flat.

Angelica: From bulbous to flat. And then at the bottom it looked like it was dripping a little. It gave a drip effect, where the cartilage at the bottom was hanging down instead of being that perfect tip, where you don’t really see the bottom of the nose from the profile. Instead, you saw it.

Kerry: Oh my god.

Angelica: I didn’t panic right away.

Kerry: Because it might have just been a work in progress, as part of the healing. It might go through phases.

Angelica: Everyone said in the videos I would watch that it’s going to be swollen, and you have to give it time. I would say about a month later, I was watching a video, and they said 95% of swelling goes down in that first month. And I thought, uh-oh, I’m in trouble. Because there’s no way that this is going to look how I want it to look.

Angelica: So I went back to him, and he was like, “Well, if you’re not happy with the results, I could write you up a quote right now for your second nose job, and I could go back in.”

Kerry: Usually I would think that you shouldn’t have to pay more.

Angelica: Exactly. I would think that if you’re unhappy, let’s go back in and fix it how you want. So he gave me a quote. It wasn’t as much as the original nose job. He said it’s not really a nose job, it’s going to be just a tweaking. And I felt betrayed. I felt like, how could someone take the money of parents who just want to make their child feel confident and happy? That’s the goal, especially at such a young age.

Angelica: Young girls are on social media. I was constantly on the feed, the explore page. You would see unrealistic expectations. Especially as a young girl who didn’t fully grow into herself, I saw unrealistic expectations of how people looked, and I wanted to look like that. And to wake up from surgery and think that I got my wish, and then to be sadly mistaken, was severely heartbreaking. I would stay up until 4:00 in the morning every single night, staring at my nose, crying, hoping that there was something that someone could do.

Angelica: My family would tell me, you don’t want to be like Michael Jackson, who just kept wanting a smaller and smaller nose.

Kerry: But it wasn’t that it was smaller. It was literally malformed.

Angelica: Yes. Exactly. So I spoke to a few of my friends, and they told me that they had a friend who got her nose done, and they showed me her picture, and I was like, “That’s a beautiful nose. Can you find out the surgeon for me?” They found out the surgeon, and they told me it’s Dr. Berlet. And when I went to your husband, the first thing that he told me was, I don’t think that your nose was broken.

Kerry: And that’s standard: when you have a rhinoplasty, they break your nose, right?

Angelica: He told me it was partially collapsed.

Kerry: But you could still breathe, even though it was partially collapsed?

Angelica: I was still able to breathe. I never had any breathing problems with the nose. It was just very, very offensive looking. And he told me I had to wait a year to get it fixed, because that’s standard procedure with a nose job, waiting a year to touch it again.

Kerry: Which is like an eternity when you’re only 15 years old.

Angelica: It really was an eternity, and it was hard, because that’s the age where everyone’s taking pictures with their friends and posting them on social media, and I didn’t want to take a picture.

Kerry: My daughter is 14 now, and pictures are an event. When you go somewhere, that’s the thing girls do. They go in the bathroom, or you’re in a beautiful scene, you take the selfies, and the posing is almost part of your night.

Angelica: I wouldn’t take a picture without a filter on, and it was kind of degrading, because one of my friends would be like, “Let’s take a picture.” I’d be like, “Oh, do you have a filter on it?” I didn’t know what to do. I had dreamed of having a beautiful nose like my mom did. And to wake up with a nose that was worse than the original was defeating.

Kerry: That’s terrible.

Angelica: I just wanted it to be fixed. That’s what I wanted.

Kerry: Were girls mean, or was anyone mean about it? Did people know that you had your nose done and were unhappy, or were you private about it?

Angelica: I was pretty open about it. In this area, it’s very common.

Kerry: Yes, it is.

Angelica: Above everything, I wanted someone to agree with me.

Kerry: You wanted validation.

Angelica: I wanted someone to say, “I see what you’re seeing. I do think it looks like a cat. I understand why you’re upset.” I didn’t really get that from anyone in the family. My mom would tell me that it looks beautiful, and my dad, too. It’s really hard for me to talk about, because it was a time in my life where I felt extremely vulnerable.

Kerry: It’s a difficult time even without this.

Angelica: It is. Then my grandmother came over. She has glaucoma, so she went blind in one eye, and she lost the majority of her vision in the other. And she was looking at me, and I remember her looking at me a little strange, like she was studying my face, but I didn’t really think anything of it. About a week later she called my mom up, and she goes, “Is Angelica with you?” And my mom said no. My mom ended up telling me the story, because she thought that I would at least find some peace in it. She said to my mom, “There’s something wrong with that nose.” So she was the first person to agree with what I was seeing. And the second person to agree with what I was seeing was your husband. He knew exactly what was wrong with it. The second I walked in, he saw everything that I saw.

Kerry: Good.

Angelica: What was very heartbreaking to hear was that he felt that it was going to take two surgeries to give me the nose that I wanted. And as a 15-year-old, knowing that I had two surgeries ahead of me, I was very upset.

Kerry: That’s daunting.

Angelica: I thought, how is this even possible, that I need to get operated on two times to restore my nose back to a normal state?

Kerry: And did he have a plan, like two surgeries in this time frame? Because I know the first year, when you were unhappy with your nose, felt so long.

Angelica: We took it one step at a time. We set a date for the first nose job. I went for it, and I was extremely happy with it. I didn’t even have the second surgery on my mind for a lot of years. I was very, very happy with it. But I would see him for steroid shots every so often, because that’s part of the maintenance afterwards. And I have very thick skin, so steroid shots are great for thinning down the skin. I had gotten a lot over the course of a few years. So I went to him again last year, and I said, “Let’s do it now. Let’s do that second surgery that we’ve been talking about for so long, and let’s make it perfect.”

Kerry: So in terms of the two phases, what was fixed in the first phase versus the second phase? It was just so damaged that it took two times?

Angelica: Well, after the first time he did my nose, it was beautiful. The part that was collapsed was still a little indented, but not anything that your average person would notice. It’s something that he and I noticed, because when I came to visit him to get my steroid shot, that’s all we would talk about, my nose. And he said to me, “[inaudible] are like miles on a nose.” So we both agreed that we should do the second one, to just perfect it. I totally could have lived with the nose that he gave me after the first surgery. I just figured, why not just make it perfect?

Kerry: And were you under anesthesia both times? What was that process like?

Angelica: The first time, I was in an operating room, completely under, so I obviously don’t have any recollection of the events.

Kerry: And was that recovery very different, when you took the tape off, versus the first one?

Angelica: I would say that they were very similar recoveries. That’s what’s very interesting about the first one. It had no red flags. I wasn’t excessively bleeding or anything like that, or in pain, or excessively bruised. It was just like the second time. It was completely the same. Now, the third nose job, that time we did it right in his office.

Kerry: What? You could just do your nose in the office?

Angelica: It was a revision of the tip. I don’t know exactly what it’s called, a tip-plasty. It didn’t have anything to do with the bone.

Kerry: No breaking again or anything?

Angelica: No breaking again. It felt very fast. It was extremely fast, but I was slightly sedated, and I felt extremely calm. I fully trusted him, so I wasn’t concerned at all. I remember little bits and parts of it. And then I got the cast on again. That was a very easy recovery, because there wasn’t a broken nose underneath it. Very little swelling, very little bruising, barely any bleeding at all, compared to the first two. It was very minimal. And I had a cast on for about a week, I think. And when I went to his office and he took it off, it already looked beautiful. Both times, it looked beautiful when he did it.

Kerry: So when you took it off, you were happy.

Angelica: I was happy. It wasn’t extremely swollen. It was swollen.

Kerry: Which it is. When you first take it off, it’s not going to be the final product, but you had a good feeling.

Angelica: And then of course, he did the nose squeezing. The famous nose squeezing.

Kerry: Wait, tell me about this. I don’t know about that.

Angelica: Oh, you don’t know about the nose squeezing? When you get a nose job, obviously there’s a lot of swelling, especially in the tip. That’s where it falls down to. So Dr. Berlet has a technique where he squeezes the nose after administering a steroid shot. It will reduce inflammation.

Kerry: So interesting. And how often? Was this regular?

Angelica: Every time. The next time I go in, I’ll get my nose squeezed. It’s after the steroid is administered. He’s able to show me what the finished product will look like by squeezing the nose. And I remember the first time, he was like, “Okay, let me squeeze your nose. I want to be able to show you what your nose is going to look like.”

Kerry: So wait, tell me specifically about this nose squeezing technique. I’m getting over a cold. Maybe he should have squeezed my nose. I’m just kidding. What does he do? Is it just his hand?

Angelica: So first he’ll administer the steroid shot. And then he’ll put a piece of gauze over my nose and squeeze it, and then squeeze the tip, and what it will do is bring down all the swelling, so that it will reveal to me what the finished product will look like.

Kerry: I see. So it’s just a temporary compression.

Angelica: Yes. It will go away. But it was such a sense of relief that first time, after the original nose job, when he squeezed it and I saw what my nose would look like. It felt like a weight was lifted off of me. I felt like I had my confidence back. I felt like it was restored. And a nose is a very important part of your face.

Kerry: And you’re so beautiful. Everything is so beautiful, so when something isn’t perfect, it’s just such a contrast to the rest of your face, right?

Angelica: Yes. When you have a wide nose, it makes the rest of your face look even fuller. So after having the nose slimmed down, with that beautiful slope, and it being symmetrical, it totally enhanced the rest of my face. There’s almost a science to it, where once the nose changes, the rest of the face becomes slimmer, and your cheekbones appear higher.

Kerry: The contour of the nose, right?

Angelica: Yes. So I just felt really relieved. I thought this was going to be a long journey ahead of me, but when he squeezed that nose, I knew I picked the right doctor, because I saw it right away, and I was like, “Yes, this is exactly what I wanted.”

Kerry: Do other doctors squeeze? Is this a thing that they all do?

Angelica: I don’t know. I think I saw a TikTok video or something of a doctor squeezing a nose, and I was like, I get that done.

Kerry: It’s funny. But it’s really just for the shape, just the compression piece of it, to help.

Angelica: Just to see what it’s going to look like, which at the time meant everything to me. I had a year of my life with an extremely botched nose, as a 15-year-old. It was devastating.

Kerry: It’s devastating to anyone, but those years are a critical time. That’s right smack in the middle of high school. You have all your friends around, and you have to almost do a year in hiding.

Angelica: That’s the year when everyone’s getting their nose done. So you hear about someone getting their nose done, and you feel like that was me, and I was so excited, and then this is what happened.

Kerry: And it must be so difficult when you see someone who has a positive result.

Angelica: Obviously I hope that everyone has a positive result. I didn’t want anyone to go through what I went through. Anyone that lived in the area of who I got botched by, I would let them know immediately: do not go to this person, because I had a very terrible experience. And I reached out to him about it too, telling him that I was very, very unhappy with my nose. And of course, he used every lie in the book: this is wrong, that’s wrong with it. It’s light perception. Light perception is a big part of noses, that’s not a lie, but I could be in the dark and it was still botched.

Kerry: And you’re an expert now. Every time you get a rhinoplasty, they’re supposed to break the nose, you said? Or does it depend what you’re doing, if it’s just the tip versus structure?

Angelica: Honestly, I think that if it’s a tip-plasty, then no. But if it’s a nose job, then yes, because when you have a bump in the nose and you file it down, it appears wider. This is actually how your husband explained it. So this is the nose, and when you shave it down, it’s like this. So then you need to break it so that it’s like this. I don’t get it completely, honestly. You should ask him.

Kerry: We could have him talk about that.

Angelica: But from what I know, that’s how it works. But there is a risk. He was pretty sure that my nose wasn’t originally broken, but you can never be 100% sure. So he told me that there are risks to breaking a nose again.

Kerry: So if you have it broken the first time, you can get a revision?

Angelica: Yes, it could be broken again. But there’s a risk factor. To this day, I don’t know if my nose was broken during that original nose job. There’s no way of me knowing. I was unconscious on the table, which a lot of people don’t realize. It’s such a vulnerable state when you’re on that table. You could really get taken advantage of, and someone can really mess your face up, your body up.

Kerry: You go in assuming and expecting positive results.

Angelica: I did. I expected positive results. My ears came out great. So I was like, my nose is going to come out great, and that was not the case.

Kerry: Wow. You know, I actually broke my nose playing water polo in college. It got broken, and I went to the side of the pool, and people were like, “Oh, don’t worry, Kerry. You’re still pretty.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh.” And my nose was like this. So I did have it reset by someone. Mine was naturally broken, so I’m sure plastic surgeons have a more strategic way to do it, but just having that period with that crooked nose, it’s so traumatic, because it’s such a big part of you, right?

Angelica: Yes. You had to wear the cast as well.

Kerry: Yeah. And it was funny, because not everyone knew that I played, so everyone thought I had had a nose job. But I just remember it being painful. And you’ve now had to do this three times.

Angelica: Three times. I’m definitely not going for any more nose jobs.

Kerry: No, I think it looks great. You look absolutely gorgeous.

Angelica: I’m very, very satisfied with it. It’s my dream nose. It’s exactly what I wanted from the start.

Kerry: Perfect. That’s amazing.

Angelica: I got my wish, but I had to go through some obstacles first.

Kerry: Which is life. And maybe with the contrast, now you appreciate it. And with other people who have a bad nose, you can talk to them about it and relate to them.

Angelica: Sure. I can definitely relate to people who have had a bad plastic surgery experience. My mom has been getting plastic surgery my whole life, and she never had a bad experience, thank God. So for it to happen to me, I was shocked.

Kerry: And since you’re an influencer, were you still doing this in your youth, as you went through this process?

Angelica: I would say that the height of my career was during the time that I was going through all of this. That’s the time when I was on the most podcasts, the most interviews, the most concerts.

Kerry: And you had this battle going on internally, because you were so unhappy with yourself, but you still had to put on a brave face.

Angelica: I had to put on a brave face, and I would just get very upset when people would find nothing wrong with it. I would mention it to people. I was very, very open about it. And like I said, until my grandmother and Dr. Berlet, there was no one that really agreed that it was botched. Of course my parents ended up supporting me through the journey.

Kerry: And are they happy now? Do they get what you meant?

Angelica: Yes. My mom does tell me, “I completely understand what you mean now. This is how your nose is supposed to look. I feel like this is how it was always supposed to look.” She thinks that my nose now is absolutely stunning. She said it was the best decision she made, to let me get another nose job and to let me go to Dr. Berlet and see what he had to say. He really saved me with my nose.

Kerry: That’s amazing.

Angelica: And he changed my view on plastic surgery, because obviously after the first one, I was a little anti-plastic surgery. But now I’m very open to it, as long as he’s doing it.

Kerry: And going back to before you had the botched surgery, I know you trusted him because of your ears, but if someone’s watching and considering having their nose done, what should they look for in a surgeon that will be an indication that it should have a successful outcome? Obviously it’s never 100%. Do you think there was something that you should have asked that you didn’t?

Angelica: I think a big thing is finding someone that someone you know went to. That’s always the best referral. A referral is a great thing, someone whose work you’ve seen in person. But sometimes you can’t do that. So I would say looking online to see their pictures, their before and afters, looking at their reviews. And having conversations, going to a consultation and seeing what multiple doctors have to say. If you hear one doctor saying one thing and another doctor saying another, get a few different opinions.

Kerry: It doesn’t hurt to get opinions.

Angelica: It’s not something that should be rushed by any means. Not every surgeon does the same thing. And that’s something I had to learn as a 15-year-old: they all have specialties, and they all have things that they’re good at. And you could get yourself in serious trouble if you don’t go to someone who is experienced. Experience is the difference. So that’s something that Dr. Berlet has.

Kerry: Yes. He has over 30 years of experience now. And I think also, because he was an architecture major, he has that structural gift. He’s also an artist, so that’s important. It’s not just a technique. It’s an artistic approach to the whole thing.

Angelica: I’ve had conversations with friends where of course he came up, about my nose, and I mentioned that I think he’s very good with plastic surgery, especially a nose, because he also has experience in architecture and in design. I think that plays a huge part in him being able to have my nose come out so symmetrical.

Kerry: Amazing. You know, I forget who it was, but someone went in recently and told Dr. Berlet, “I want a nose like Angelica’s.” What a compliment that is, right? It’s come so far, from you being unhappy, looking like a cat, and now they’re like, “I want Angelica’s nose.”

Angelica: I’ve had people come up to me in stores, in the mall, and tell me that they love my nose, that I have a beautiful nose.

Kerry: That must be so validating, rewarding.

Angelica: It was definitely one of the best feelings in the world, especially because of everything I’ve been through. To hear that other people think that my nose is beautiful is a great thing to hear. So I’m very blessed to have found Dr. Berlet, because I don’t know if I would be happy right now in my life if I didn’t get my nose fixed.

Kerry: Wow. So happy that you got to this happy ending. Cheers.

Angelica: Cheers.

Kerry: All right. And we haven’t even touched the Crumbl cookies here. This is how the cookie crumbles. So now we’ve got to devour some cookies.

Angelica: I’m going to need lipo when we’re done.

Kerry: Well, I can tell you he’s good at that. But I think you have a long way to go before you’ll need any of that. So anyway, thank you again so much. I really appreciate you coming. I think that you will inspire a lot of young women who have been through this, or people that are considering it. You’ve helped give a plan of what you need to do, and that you can recover if you’re upset with your result. I admire your persistence, and you truly look stunning.

Angelica: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a big dream of mine to share my story and to warn people about the dangers that could potentially lead you to getting botched. Now at least people know what to look out for, the red flags. And all I can say is go to Dr. Berlet to get your nose done, because it will come out great.

Kerry: And then the follow-up nose squeeze.

Angelica: The follow-up nose squeeze. He’s the best nose squeezer in the country.

Kerry: So, thank you so much for watching Once Upon a Surgery. I really enjoyed talking to Angelica and hearing about this incredible transformation that had a little botched trauma, unfortunately, along the way. But I am really thrilled that she had such a happy ending. I’d love to hear your comments and questions, and don’t forget to subscribe to Once Upon a Surgery.