It took me three years to walk into a clinic — and the thing I feared most was not the surgery
I was more afraid of my colleagues than of the pain. I am writing this because back then I could not find anyone telling this story.
Three years ago I saved a photo of a nose on my phone. I would open it every night and close it again. It was not the money — I had saved enough by the second year. It was that I did not know what to say when people asked why I suddenly looked different.
What I want to say to anyone standing where I stood: separate the two questions. The first is "do I want this". The second is "what will I tell other people". I mixed those two together for three years and answered neither.
At the consultation the doctor asked me something I had not prepared for: "Who are you changing this for?" I sat in silence for a while. I think a doctor willing to ask that is a doctor worth trusting.
It has been eight months. The hardest part was not the ten days of swelling. It was the first three weeks, when I was still waiting for some reaction from the people around me and realised almost nobody noticed. I had been afraid of an audience that did not exist.