A Blocked Nose Since Childhood — and the Fear of Finally Doing Something About It
For as long as Revati could remember, one side of her nose had never worked the way it was supposed to. Not as a child, not as a teenager, not as an adult. The blockage on that one side was simply part of her life — something she had quietly adapted around without ever expecting it to change. She breathed through the other side, slept in the positions that helped, and got on with things. It was the kind of condition that rarely makes it to a doctor’s appointment because it feels too ordinary, too long-standing, too much like just the way things are.
When Revati eventually began thinking about rhinoplasty — both to address the blockage and for cosmetic reasons — it was not a decision she arrived at lightly. She also wanted to have a breast augmentation. Researching her options carefully, she looked at multiple surgeons before deciding where to go. What settled it, in the end, was something harder to quantify than qualifications or reviews. When she came across Dr. Anjali Saple’s profile, something about the way the doctor came across made Revati feel she could trust her, approach her, and speak openly with her.
That trust still had to compete with a great deal of apprehension. Surgery was surgery. The questions, the what-ifs, the fear of the unknown — all of it was present when Revati finally made her appointment. Even the prospect of the IV line was enough to make most people anxious. But when the day arrived and the anaesthesia team applied a small local anaesthetic before placing her IV, Revati felt nothing at all. She had to ask Dr. Saple whether it had been done yet. It already had.
Both the rhinoplasty and breast augmentation were scheduled together in a single operative session. Revati arrived at the clinic at 7am.
The Same Morning, She Could Feel the Air Moving
She left the same day.
By the time Revati was getting ready to go home that evening, something she had never experienced in her life was already happening. Air was moving through the side of her nose that had been blocked since childhood.
“One side of my nose was always blocked since childhood. Now I am able to breathe.”
It was not a gradual improvement or something she noticed days later. It was immediate — a physical sensation, specific and entirely new, felt in the hours after she came around from surgery. She described being able to feel each breath entering and leaving through that newly open nostril. For the breast augmentation, she had expected discomfort. There was none. She could lift her arms without difficulty before she left the building. The dryness in her throat from not drinking water all day was, by her own account, the most noticeable thing she felt.
“Even I came with a lot of skepticism, doubts and fear.”
That was how she had arrived that morning. It was not how she left. The fear she had carried into the clinic had been replaced by something quieter and more settled — not the manufactured confidence of someone performing relief for a camera, but the genuine calm of a person who had come through something they were afraid of and found it far better than expected.
From Research to Recovery — How the Day Unfolded
Revati’s decision to go with Dr. Saple came down to trust built before she ever set foot in the clinic. During her research, she had looked at a number of surgeons. Dr. Saple’s face, she said, stood out — as someone approachable, someone she could speak to honestly. That instinct was confirmed in the consultation, where Dr. Saple took the time to explain both procedures clearly and address the doubts Revati had arrived with.
The surgery itself unfolded with a smoothness that caught Revati off guard.
“I didn’t even realize that I was taken to surgery and I came out and everything is done.”
The rhinoplasty corrected the structural issue that had caused the lifelong blockage on one side. The breast augmentation was performed in the same session — a combined procedure that meant one operative day, one anaesthetic, and one recovery period rather than two. Revati had arrived at 7am and was discharged the same evening. The local anaesthetic used before her IV insertion — something the clinic does routinely — meant she had felt nothing when the line went in, a detail small enough to seem minor but meaningful to anyone who has spent years dreading that particular moment.
What came next was the part Revati spoke about with particular warmth. After she got home, the care continued.
“She is always there.”
Dr. Saple messaged Revati after discharge with specific guidance — which creams to apply, when to take her medications, and what to expect. She followed up again at one week, and again at ten days. It was not a handout or a printed sheet sent home with her. It was a doctor checking in, personally, at each stage of the recovery.
For Revati, that consistency was what set the experience apart. She had come in with doubts about surgery, about doctors, about whether the outcome would be worth the fear. What she found was a surgeon who operated with care and communicated with the same attention — before the procedure, during it, and long after she had gone home.
That, perhaps, was the most telling detail of all. Not the same-day discharge, not the absence of pain, not even the immediate improvement in breathing that she had waited thirty-something years to feel. It was the sense that the person who had performed her surgery was genuinely invested in how she was doing — and that investment did not end when she walked out the door.