 Hi, beautiful. You're very up close and personal today, which is pretty much the theme of the video. Today's video is all about my ears. And if you think that's weird, I would have to agree with you. Basically, I got something done to my ears that I've been wanting to get done for a very long time and it finally happened. And if you're like, what the hell, what did you do to your earlobes? We'll get there. Today you'll watch me go through getting some surgery done. You'll see some before and afters and I'll let you know how everything went throughout the entire journey. But let me warn you, things will get graphic at some point in this video. If you're not somebody who likes that, maybe this isn't the video for you. I also wanted to share my story on YouTube about this topic because when I was wanting this surgery, there was not a lot of YouTube videos about it or people just didn't really break down the entire journey very well and I couldn't really get much information out of it. So I decided to make this video today to help those people who also want to get this done and maybe bring more attention to the topic and help some people out there. So with that all said, let's get into it. Let me tell you a little story about what happened to my wonderful earlobes. Back when I was 15 years old, I was a very angsty scene slash emo boy, whatever you want to call it. A lot of the emo kids had stretched earlobes, had piercings, all the above. And my mom was definitely not for it. She did not want me to get any piercings and I really wanted to do this. So it was super important that I got my ears pierced and I ended up doing it myself along with a lot of other piercings on my body. After I pierced my ears, I began stretching them very, very quickly from just a regular old ear piercing to five-eighths of an inch and this is what that looked like. It was quite large. I can't even believe my ears used to be that large and if you can't already tell what this video is about or what surgery I'm getting done, I am getting my earlobes repaired from having them stretched. So I ended up stopping at five-eighths of an inch and that was enough for me. I decided I was done and I still had the possibility of shrinking my ears back down to its regular size or something very small from five-eighths of an inch. If I went up to an inch or two inches, girl, there is definitely no going back. Listen, I just wanna preface what I'm about to say. I never hated my gauged ears. It was a great thing at the time. I loved them. I thought it was so fun to do it. It was like, how big can I get them? How fast can I do it? It was really painful, really fun, oddly enough. I mean, I really liked pain at that time. Again, very angsty. It was enjoyable for some odd reason and it gave me something to do. It was cool, but then I grew out of that eventually. So at the age of 19, when I moved to New York, got an amazing job, I decided it wasn't for me anymore. I didn't want my ears stretched. I thought it looked a little childish. Just in my opinion, if you have them and you like them, that's totally cool. I took them out and began the shrinking process. So took them out, left them out for a year. They shrunk down to a double zero gauge, which is much smaller. Here's a comparison between a 5.8 of an inch and a double zero gauge. They are much smaller. Here's some pictures of me wearing my gauges. You guys have seen them before. I wear them on my channel every time I film up until recently because I don't have them anymore. They are very small for me. They look like earrings. I can totally rock that. And then I kind of got sick of that. I wanted to wear earrings so badly. I got a second hole pierced in my right ear to make me feel better so I could wear other earrings, but that wasn't doing it for me and I wanted to experiment more with earrings. I just wanted regular ear holes so badly. Oh my God, don't ever take your ear holes for granted, guys. I had major earlobe envy and I decided to go ahead with the earlobe repair surgery, which means I'm gonna get my earlobes cut open and sewn the fuck up, which I couldn't wait for. Okay, so boom. Let's fast forward to the day before surgery. Here's what my earhole size was the day before surgery. Here's me kind of stretching them out and showing you guys what they look like. They're not that cute. They're definitely stretched, not so nice. I can't not wear my plugs or else I feel like they just look really ugly and droopy and nasty. So it just wasn't fun. So I'm chilling. It's the night before the surgery and I just wanted to show you guys my ears. As you can see, they're gaping and they are large. They're definitely large and in charge and I'm over it. So I finally am getting them done. It's been forever. So yeah, tomorrow morning, we're getting it done. This is the last of them. They've been with me since I was like 15, 16. So I shrunk them down and now getting them closed the frick up. Shout out to my mom who always told me my whole life that I was going to want to get them fixed and that's gonna cost a lot of money to get them fixed. And yeah, mom, I get it. I'm dreading the healing process. I'm just like so lazy with healing stuff. I just want things to be done and over with and I don't wanna like have scars and it's just gonna be like, oh, it's gonna be such a drag, but like it's fine. I'm gonna think positively about it, it'll be great. So off to surgery, I went the next day. I went to Dr. Rappaport in Manhattan and you'll see a bit of my experience with him. We consulted about my ears, which you'll see and then we went forth with the surgery. So here is my quick consultation with Dr. Rappaport and everything we kind of talked about before getting the surgery done. It's pretty straightforward, but here you go. All right, so I'm here with Dr. Rappaport and he is about to talk to me about my ears that have been stretched very wide and we are gonna close them up today. So we're gonna analyze exactly what we're seeing. Your desire is to not have the gauge holes anymore. What I wanna show you is what's involved here. This is not the biggest size gauge hole I've ever seen but it's not tiny. And what I'm explaining is it's just like in general when you're fixing or closing an ear piercing, when a piercing happens, the skin grows from the front to the back. So you see there's just skin and that's why it doesn't close out. And when you're closing it, basically you're removing that skin that's grown in and then you have a raw edge on the front and a raw edge on the back and you close the front to the front, the back to the back. Now, if we only did exactly what I said, there's an issue, right? Because if we go in this direction, which it seems to be asking for, your ears a little pointy, right? So we're gonna have to take that up a little bit and that means that instead of a straight line, I'm gonna have to take up a little bit of this tissue so there's gonna be a little bit of a T so that you're not gonna have sort of Dr. Spock pointy, funny ears. Right, I thought about that. Sometimes when they're bigger, we actually cut this whole thing and lay it down, but I think you're in that borderline place that what I just said is gonna go best. So you said you're gonna cut up the middle inside. Right, so I'm gonna numb you. And that's all you're gonna feel is a tiny prick and then you're numb and we're working as you're not gonna feel. Then I'm gonna basically, this isn't the right marker for that, but everything behind that white line is gonna get cut out, right? That whole middle thing. I started arranging the tissue for closure and my main goal is to pick this up just a little to try to make it more like, you know, rounded like that and less pointy like that. Because remember, when you have a line here, the more I go on the outside, when you close the line, it's actually longer, right? Cause I have an arc and then when I close it, it becomes a longer line, which makes the ear even pointier. So I'm not gonna go out too far at all, but again, I'm gonna have to take it up a little bit and we'll deal with, I'll be dealing with that with, you know, little, little snips and then just some stitches and the stitches will come out in seven days. You'll be able to, to shower and wash and dab dry tomorrow. We're gonna put a bandage at the end, mainly just to protect you for the rest of the day and tonight because there's always a little chance of bleeding a little when the numbing medicine wears off, but then tomorrow you don't have to have it covered. I wouldn't do hard workouts for the next few days, but you can pretty much be active. How long is the procedure? 30 minutes or less each side? Less, maybe 20. How many stitches do you think will be in my hands? We've never counted. Patients always ask, I ain't never counted. There may be some running stitches, not a lot, I don't know, on each aspect, you know, front to back, to seven. So that was our consultation, pretty straightforward. We discussed, you know, how he's gonna cut it and how he's gonna make it look normal again and I was really excited, so ready for it, just cut me up and do a good. I actually waited so long for this appointment because I had it booked right before everything happened in the world with, you know, Ms. COVID and things got pushed back months. I was so excited to get it done. Now is the time where this gets really graphic. I'm about to show you guys exactly what happens when he sliced my ear open. I don't think it's that bad to watch. I do, however, love surgery shows, so maybe I am numb to, you know, stuff like this, but I think it's interesting. I mean, it's not that bad. Just try and watch it and if you think it's bad, fast forward, okay? That's all I'm trying to say. Both sides have been repaired. There are a bunch of stitches, no more gauges. Yes. Marine's gonna put a little piece of gauze with tape. The bandage always looks a little weird, but again, just try to keep it til tomorrow morning. Okay. And then you can shower, dab dry. You want, like, in a couple days to not have it look scabby, so if it's scabby, just spend a little more time in the shower because then it'll just make for a better scar and easier suture removal, which will happen a week from today. Great. All right? How was it? I didn't feel anything. Thank you so much. So we did that whole thing. I, by the way, did not feel a thing. My ear was numb. A lot of people were like, did you go to sleep for this? Like, no, it's not that big of a deal. It's like, they numb your ear. The only thing you can feel is them putting the needle in your ear to numb your ear. It was like, you know, a little bit of a pinch. I don't really care. I'm not really one to, like, care about those things. I'm pretty chill when it comes to needles. I thought it was fine. So here's a photo of them right after the surgery. They are stitched up, bruised up, really swollen, so ugly. I was like, I had to wear bandages home and I wore bandages to sleep that night. It honestly wasn't that bad because they weren't painful because they were numbed, took a few Advil, got over it. I slept right in between two pillows. That's a good idea to do when you get this done. Sleep right in between two pillows. That way your ear kind of floats. You just don't wanna put pressure on them too much or else they bruise even more, which is what I found out the hard way because I was kind of rough that first night with my sleeping and I was like, oh, my ear that I sleep on more, which is this one, got much more bruised and much more swollen. So be careful with that, but it's not the end of the world. It's not a big deal. And if you do plan on getting this done, I just wanna mention that it is a little bit, like, scary when you first look at your ears after getting this done and you're like, maybe this is just me. But I was like, was this a good idea? Like, why do my ears look like this? Like, did he screw it up? I do worry about these things and it's my ears, like, they're on my face. Like, it's kind of a really big deal and I don't want botched ears and you can't just grow ear lobes back. Like, it was a big thing. I was really worried about it. And I'm on camera all the time. I wanna look presentable. So I was freaking out. I don't know if other people do this. And then I was like, Brad, it's gonna be fine. Your ears are going to heal. It's all gonna be okay. Hopefully. Overall though, it's a pretty low maintenance procedure. You really don't do much. You don't really have to clean them. You can let water run on them, but you don't wanna, like, scrub them or, like, do anything crazy. You just let them be. Dr. Rappaport said it was very important too. It just let them be, let them heal on their own. Don't massage them. Don't do too much. Just let them be. Put SPF on them so that the sunlight doesn't make the scars darker, which I need to remember to do more. That's basically it. It was really straightforward. The healing process didn't really do anything. And the only thing that was kind of ugly was wearing stitches in your ears, unless you think they're cool. I thought it was kind of cool having stitches in my ears, but also when I talked to people, they were like, the fuck's in your ears. And I'm like, oh, those are stitches. Yeah, he stitched the front and the back of my ears. So there was probably like, I don't know, eight stitches on each side or seven, whatever. It doesn't really matter. Everybody gets a different amount of stitches. They get their ears sewn up a different way to fit their ear. It's very unique to your ear lobe. At least that's how Dr. Rappaport did it for me. And he kind of figured out what would look the best and proportionate to the rest of my ear. You know, if I didn't have this, it would look weird. So after a week of having my ears all stitched up, I went back to my doctor and he then took out the stitches, which was also pretty painless. I mean, there's a few pinches here and there. Wasn't a big deal. Got them out. I was like, oh, thank God I'm done with this. I'm gonna have to come back again. Like, I don't wanna leave my house. They looked like they had stitches in them. You know, here's some photos for you. They were very big, bruised, swollen, nasty, kind of ugly, still worried a little bit, but still just like, trust the process, Brad. Trust the process. So then the recovery process continued. I just monitored them. I didn't do much to them. I didn't actually put anything on them. He said it, honestly, just leaving them alone would be best. And so I just did that. And I feel like it's been really great. I'm still doing that. I'm still just leaving them alone, cleaning them off once in a while. So I don't get an infection or anything like that, but they're very closed up. I don't think anything's getting in there at this point. And slowly but surely they began to look normal again. And I was getting happier and happier every week or every day that I had the stitches out. They were looking so much better, so much more normal. And I was feeling so good and so confident about my ear lobes. Like who knew ear lobes can make you feel so damn good. Okay, so that brings us to where we are now. I got my surgery on June 11th. It is now July 9th, so it has been four weeks. So they are looking really nice, as you guys can see on camera. But also I will say they're still swollen. You know, they're still red. They're still a little tender. They're definitely not totally normal yet. This one's still a bit more swollen than this one. This one's a little smaller. This one's a little bigger. Obviously they're not gonna be perfect because you know, ear lobes are sisters, not twins. Just like our eyebrows and the rest of our body. Nothing is exactly identical. They're still healing. It's gonna take about a year for them to fully heal. Just like any other surgery you get done, it usually takes a year to fully heal up. So still trusting the process. I think they look really great though. And I'm really happy with them so far. I will show you a quick close up of my ear lobes right now. So as you can see, I still do have a scar down them. I think it looks kind of rad. I'm not mad about it. I don't mind scars. I have one on my face right here too. You can kind of hardly see it now, but I thought that one, I was like five. But that's a different story. I don't mind the scar. I know it's gonna go away. It's only been four weeks, so it has a long ways to go. Overall, I'm very happy that I did this. Some things I was kind of worried about before doing this was, you know, he is cutting out a big portion of the center of my ear lobe. I didn't really know how he was going to make it look normal since he's taking out so much skin and then sewing it back together. I was like, how is this gonna work? Like, how am I gonna have normal sized ear lobes and not like tiny ones? Somehow it worked. I think that the scar tissue maybe added to the volume of my ear lobe, which is really cool. Maybe he's just a magician. I don't know. I do feel like he did an amazing job at making it proportionate to the rest of my ear. I've never thought about ear lobes so much in my life until now. And now I look at everybody's ear lobes and I'm like, wow, great lobes. Another thing that I need to add to my list of weird qualities. I do plan on getting my ear lobes re-pierced. I do want to wear regular earrings, like I said before. So he said you could get it pierced. I think it was like three weeks after. It was very soon after you can get them re-pierced, but I kind of wanna let them heal for a little while. They just seem like really irritated and my ears don't do super well with piercings. I don't wanna fuck them up anymore. I don't wanna like piss them off. We'll just wait it out. I'm sure I'll get them done in like six months or whatever. I wanna live my piercing free life for a moment. I also wanted to quickly mention that you can get this done even if you don't have ear lobes stretched out as far as mine were. You can get this done if your ear lobes were stretched out from heavy jewelry. If you have a long slit in your ear, you can totally do this. You can do it if you have even bigger holes than I did. You can get it if you had way smaller ones. So anybody who has that concern can totally get this surgery done. Again, it's pretty chill, pretty straightforward and it's not the baby deal. I will however say it can be very pricey. Luckily I can afford a surgery like this and I do understand that some people cannot but you know, you get what you pay for a lot of times with surgery stuff and I just wouldn't recommend going to somebody who may be a lot cheaper just because this is on your face, you're gonna have to live with this forever. You can't really add a tissue back to your ears once it's gone. Take that and do what you will with it. That is my two cents on that. So, kids out there, you know, if you're young and you're like, dude, I wanna stretch my ears like should I do it? I don't regret it. Was it a lot of money to fix it? Yes, I mean, I don't know. Just think about it, make a good decision. You're like a one life to live, go for it but just know that you may have to go through exactly what I went through and pay a lot of money to fix it. That's what I would say to my kids, you know? Do it but girl, boy, whatever you are, you're fixing it all by yourself. And I wanted to just lastly say that this video is not sponsored by Dr. Rapaport. I did go to him, pay with my own money, did everything myself. So if you guys would like to visit him, his links are down below. You can get a consultation, you can go see him. It was a great experience with him. I do recommend him and I love my lobes. That's really my full earlobe reconstruction surgery story. I hope this helped you decide whether or not to get it done or, you know, if you are getting it done, I hope this just kind of calmed your nerves for getting your ears done. It's a pretty chill process. It'll be fine, it'll be great. And if you guys have more questions, please leave your questions below. I or someone else, I'm sure, will answer your question. I will try and do my best to get back to some of you guys after I post this video and hopefully I can answer some of them for you. That is all for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching this. Don't forget to follow me on all the different social media networks, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok at BradMondoNYC. And also you can find my Facebook page and my Snapchat show under BradMondo. And make sure you check out my hair care brand, X-MondoHair at X-MondoHair on Instagram or X-MondoHair.com to get beautiful, fabulous, amazing glowing hair. And don't forget to live your extra life. And I'll see you next time. Bye, guys. This is Viper Smoothin' Oil. This oil is a combination of all of my favorites. It has Bobap Oil, Argan Oil, Carrot Seed Oil. Now, what sets this oil apart is it really penetrates the hair cuticle. It goes deep inside. 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