I couldn’t bear looking at my ‘beaky’ nose every day. So when an earache led to free plastic surgery I thought I’d struck gold. Instead it led to THREE YEARS of agony… don’t make my mistake

Catherine Ebs, like many women critical of their own appearance from a young age, always wanted a new nose.

The 29-year-old Manhattan-based content creator said she dreamed of correcting her nose’s natural shape, which she described as ‘beaky,’ because she long struggled looking at it.

She told the Daily Mail: ‘I’ve always wanted a nose job, even since childhood. When I smiled, I would have a hook. It leaned completely left, so if you were looking at me straight on, my nose leaned completely sideways.’

It affected her daily life and confidence – especially as a content creator, constantly seeing her face and all of her perceived imperfections on screen. She knew she couldn’t go on this way and that it was time to have work done.

‘Being online every single day and seeing my nose, seeing how much it hooked in every video, going to events and having people take my photo…’ she said. ‘Seeing it every single day in so many different settings and not being able to have my own construction of what I look like outside of my own social page definitely sped up the process.’

But what Ebs didn’t anticipate was that her quest for the perfect nose wouldn’t be a simple, one-and-done surgery. Far from it: An excruciating earache would be the beginning of her journey – now fully perfected after two surgeries, one even more painful than the earache, in three years.

Ebs visited an ear, nose and throat doctor for her ear pain in 2023 and discovered that her troubling issue was actually the result of a deviated septum. She learned that her earache was connected to issues she had with breathing through her nose, something her doctor told her could be fixed with a rhinoplasty surgery.

For Ebs, the chance to get an insurance-covered surgery that could not only help her breathe better but do some cosmetic editing she had long desired seemed too good to be true.

‘The original goal was not a nose job at all – I just wanted my ear taken care of,’ Ebs said. ‘I already had some insecurities around my nose. That’s what led to me asking if I could add on cosmetic changes to this medical surgery.’

At the time, she had felt like she struck gold, given she wouldn’t need to fork over the funds.

She said: ‘I was young and transparently, I couldn’t afford a really great nose job, so when I realized that insurance could cover this, I was very much excited.’

‘I didn’t think I would have one in my near future. I had known I always wanted one, but I knew I wanted to get a good one and I knew I was going to have to save for it.’

Within a week of that appointment, Ebs was scheduled for her nose job and she was beyond elated for the surgery – until things took a turn.

Though Ebs had already undergone surgery in the past for a breast reduction and wasn’t scared of going under anesthesia, nothing prepared her for the extreme discomfort she felt after her first rhinoplasty.

She described the pain as ‘horrible’ and the worst she had ever experienced. The surgery was traumatic, requiring doctors to break the bones in her nose during what she called a ‘really brutal’ process. Afterward, she was left swollen, bruised, and in tears throughout recovery. For the first two weeks, she struggled heavily, and doctors told her the swelling and full healing process could take nearly a year. 

The painful ordeal took on another level of difficulty during the healing process when, Ebs realized that her nose didn’t look at all like what she had hoped for.

‘Around the six-month mark, I knew my nose was nowhere near cosmetically what I was hoping it would be,’ Ebs, who extensively documented her journey online to her over one million followers, said. ‘I was frustrated. I wish I had done more research.’

To add insult to injury, she felt it kept getting worse, too.

She said: ‘Obviously, it was better than what I went in with, but after a year, my nose started to make a hook in a J shape. I really began doing my research because if I was going to go under again, I wanted a doctor who knew 100 percent what he was doing.’

Seeking a doctor who specialized in doing rhinoplasty revisions, she took to social media and searched using hashtags and comparing before and after photos of plastic surgeons.

Ebs landed on Dr Ramtin Kassir, who she followed for years long before her surgery. As she became serious about going under the knife, she saw Kassir’s work on influencer Brianna ‘Chickenfry’ LaPaglia and was convinced he was the one.

After moving to New York City, she booked a consult with Kassir, bringing along her husband, who wasn’t keen on her going under anesthesia again for a cosmetic surgery. After the consult, both Ebs and her husband were sold on the nose job revision thanks to Kassir’s understanding and track record.

‘A doctor who does revisions needs to know the intricacies of being able to fix someone’s work on top of God’s work,’ Ebs said. ‘Making sure that he could do that and execute it at such a high level was a really big thing.’

As Ebs began to prepare for the surgery, she documented her appointments and detailed the lead-up to the nose job candidly on her social media accounts, just as she did when she got her first nose job. She felt it was important to chronicle ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ truth of surgery on social media, which she calls her ‘digital diary.’

‘You’re always going to get the real, raw version of my life,’ she said. ‘We live in a comparison age. I never want someone to follow me and think that naturally I woke up like this.’

While she maintains that she was always going to get a rhinoplasty, Ebs knows her work as a creator may have hastened her nose job journey.

She said: ‘I always wanted the first one, so I was going to do that no matter what and the second I really wanted personally.’

‘There’s parts of me that didn’t want to document cosmetic procedures, simply because I don’t want to promote cosmetic procedures. But if I’m going to do it. I want to be honest about it, because I don’t want someone to be like, ‘Wow, she’s so naturally beautiful. I wish I could look like that.”

That importance, she said, stems from seeing ‘a lot of creators’ who ‘silently do things behind the scenes.’

‘I am not naturally like this. I’ve gone under twice to fix my nose, I’ve gotten Botox, and I do lip filler, so I always want to make sure that I’m documenting so people know.’ 

Ebs knows that while this kind of transparency online is embraced by many, the honesty does leave her vulnerable to the keyboard warriors. But she said potential backlash is worth it for candor.

Since the surgery was not medically necessary, as the first one was to correct her deviated septum, Ebs paid for surgery number two out of pocket, something she said she would ‘1,000 percent’ do again in a heartbeat.

She said: ‘I’m very happy with where I’m at. Now I’m very confident. I’m not sitting here analyzing my face and being like, “Oh, what do I need next?”‘

In fact, Ebs said this investment in her nose – and all the trouble having to get multiple surgeries – makes daily returns with the delight she feels looking at it. When she wakes up and sees herself in the mirror, her nose is an affirmation that she made the right choice not to settle for something she didn’t absolutely love.

‘I feel so good.’ she said. ‘Throughout my life, when I would look at myself, I would only see my nose. Now, when I look in the mirror, I look at my eyes. I just feel so confident and I love it so much.’