I Lost My Nose to a Dog Bite. 4 Surgeries Later, I Finally Looked Like Myself.
About 3 million Americans get emergency care for facial injuries each year, and while most are minor, some are life changing. For Christine Merrick, a freak dog bite took the tip of her nose and sent her straight into complex nasal reconstruction, multiple surgeries, forehead flaps, and cartilage grafts, all to rebuild not just her face but her self-confidence. Success rates for this type of surgery are high, around 90 to 95 percent, but the journey is anything but easy.
Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions and graphic images of the injury.
From a very young age, my mother put great emphasis on my looks. I started dance school as a kid and took voice lessons. By middle school, I’d fallen in love with musical theater and was convinced I’d be an actress when I grew up. I even landed a few commercials as a teenager, which felt huge at the time. My parents were supportive; they encouraged me to chase whatever dream I had that week and, when I was 17, my mom entered me into the Miss Teen Connecticut pageant. I won.
But like most teenage girls, I constantly questioned my appearance and my weight. My mother would get upset if I left the house without being “put-together,” and that expectation stuck with me. Even now, at 52, I wear makeup, dresses, and high heels to work every day — even as a veterinary oncologist. That’s why what happened on February 8, 2023, just a week before my 50th birthday, felt almost too ironic.
I was examining an English bulldog, weighing roughly 50 pounds, and I had known him for many months because lymphoma treatment required weekly visits. He was a dog with an “edge,” so my nurses would muzzle him for blood draws and chemotherapy. But he loved treats and would get so excited when I walked in the room, so I wasn’t necessarily on guard around him. For his physical exam, I hadn’t muzzled him. I wanted his visits to feel positive because quality of life is everything in veterinary oncology.
That day, there was nothing unusual. I was giving him treats and talking with one of my technicians when I looked back and felt a pinch on my nose. At first, I thought he’d just head-butted me and caused a nosebleed. I didn’t make a sound and turned around to try to keep working.
The pain was there, sharp and burning, but not as bad as it should have been. My brain just couldn’t catch up to what had happened. When I saw my reflection in my co-worker’s phone, I was more confused than anything. All I could see was a hole in the middle of my face. He had bitten off part of my nose. But it didn’t register at first. Then instinct took over. I went into task mode, focused on what needed to be done next. In my head, I kept thinking it could be fixed by the end of the day. Of course, that was the shock talking.
I ended up at two ERs because the first couldn’t handle my level of trauma. At the first hospital they gave me a tetanus shot, but I wasn’t worried about rabies; the dog was up to date on vaccines. By the time I got to the second ER, it was close to 6 p.m. The bite had happened before 9 a.m. that morning, and I’d spent most of the day lying in a hallway bed, waiting. When the doctor finally arrived, she seemed almost annoyed. I’ll never forget the feeling when she started injecting lidocaine directly into the wound — it was horrific. I was alone and terrified, and that might have been the worst part of the entire experience. They eventually stitched my nose under local anesthesia, prescribed antibiotics to prevent infection, and sent me on my way with instructions to find a plastic surgeon.
I’d had cosmetic procedures before — Botox, filler, laser — but this was different. I immediately went into task mode, not letting myself spiral. I typed “nose reconstruction” and “facial plastic surgeons” into Google, desperate to move fast and start recovery. I was frozen in front of my computer. So I gave up and called Dr. Kim Nichols, the cosmetic dermatologist I had seen prior to the dog bite, for a recommendation. Dr. Nichols told me that one of her medical-school classmates, Dr. Oren Tepper, was top of his field in craniofacial reconstruction. I called his office the next morning and was able to see him that evening.
Dr. Tepper was very up front regarding the level of damage, telling me I would need about five to six surgeries to rebuild my nose piece by piece over a couple of years. The first surgery, on February 28, 2023, was the major one and the true start of my reconstruction. It lasted about five or six hours and involved creating the forehead flap and using cartilage from behind my ear to rebuild the structure of my nose. This procedure established permanent blood flow and provided the best chance for a natural reconstruction, since forehead skin closely matches nasal skin in thickness, texture, and color. This was the surgery where I actually allowed Dr. Tepper to disfigure me in order to make me whole again. Thankfully I was asleep the entire time, and the pain afterward was far less than I expected.
The second surgery, on March 23, 2023, just three weeks and two days later, was the forehead-flap detachment. It took about two hours and involved separating the flap of skin that had been temporarily attached from my forehead to my nose. The pain after this was by far the worst, literally everything hurt. The first few days were a really rough blur, and changing the dressing on my face was something I’ll never forget. I was looking at my face, but it didn’t look like my face.
But here I was, coming back from the brink of permanent disfigurement, thinking: If Dr. Tepper could rebuild my nose from a dog bite, surely he could lift sagging jowls and smooth some lines. Recovery from anesthesia is always tough for me, as I stay groggy and dizzy longer than most, so the idea of combining the cosmetic procedures I wanted with the necessary surgery felt like a small but powerful way to reclaim some control.
Most of the reconstruction was covered through workers’ comp, which meant everything was bundled in a way that never translated into a clear total. Dr. Tepper agreed to accept the workers’-comp rate (something he doesn’t typically do), so I could get the care I needed without fighting the system. The cosmetic procedures I chose later were paid for separately.
I thought I knew exactly what I wanted: a face-lift and a lip-lift. Those had always been my “someday” ideas back before the accident. But my doctor suggested a few more tweaks I hadn’t even thought about, but I trusted him and said yes.
In May 2025, I underwent my fourth nose reconstruction along with my selected cosmetic procedures — a face-lift, brow-lift, lip-lift, fat grafting, chin implant, and laser treatment. I felt excited yet calm and relaxed from the moment I walked in. When I woke from anesthesia, my nurse was right there helping me move, managing my pain, which wasn’t very severe considering the amount of work I had done, and even arranging transportation to my post-care hotel where I would spend the night under her care. The next morning, she helped me shower and accompanied me to my recheck appointment. The staff was with me every step of the way through recovery, so I was never alone. I had 24/7 access to my doctor and his team, which made me feel completely supported.
When I finally saw my face after surgery, I was ecstatic. My head was still wrapped, but the changes were immediately apparent: like years of stress had been removed. I felt a wave of relief and joy. Surprisingly, I didn’t really feel pain, just the discomfort of swelling. I think all of my prior nose surgeries helped me tolerate it. The bruising and swelling peaked around days three to five but each week after, my reflection improved and my confidence grew alongside it.
Ten days after surgery, I went back to work. (I kept treating all my of patients, including the dog who bit me. He remained in my care for the rest of his life.) No one said, “What did you do?” The most common reaction was, “You look so rested.” I beamed as one client even asked when my face-lift was scheduled, and I told her, “Two weeks ago.”
I didn’t look different. I just looked like me, minus a few years of stress. Friends were blown away. Two of my best friends booked consultations with my doctor.
But more than the compliments, what I felt was relief — relief that I could finally look in the mirror and see myself as someone who turned tragedy into transformation.
Looking back at my childhood, from dance classes to beauty pageants, I can see how much those early lessons about appearance stuck with me. And the pressure to look perfect didn’t fully fade until this experience. In total, I’ve completed the fourth stage of my nose reconstruction and I still have one more procedure ahead, likely in early 2026, to address a tissue bubble along my left nostril from the prior procedures. The reconstructive process ended up making me more comfortable with my face than I ever expected. It gave me perspective. I realized how much worse the damage could have been. I learned to live with imperfections and scars and, somewhere along the way, I started to see them as part of my story. I was self-conscious, sure, but not embarrassed or paranoid about being seen as less than perfect. You could see the scars and irregularities, but the funny thing is no one else really noticed. People who meet me today have no idea what I experienced that awful day at my veterinary office; this event that was totally monumental to me had gone unnoticed by everyone else. It reminded me just how much harder we are on ourselves than anyone else is.