Influencer Gets a ‘Free Nose Job.’ A Year Later, She Was Paying $26K to Fix It (Exclusive)

Isabelle Lux never really took issue with the way her nose looked. It was pretty nice and straight, at least for the first two decades of her life. It was the way her nose worked — or rather, the way it didn’t work — that gave Lux trouble.

Until age 21, Lux could only properly breathe through one nostril. She tells PEOPLE that the problem “always bothered” her, but she didn’t realize it was anything noteworthy until a doctor finally diagnosed her with an internal deviated septum. In 2014, Lux was told she needed to undergo a septoplasty operation to straighten out the inside of her nose.

Since she was going under the knife for a medically necessary — and therefore medically insured — procedure, she learned that she could also ask for some cosmetic changes too, if she wanted.

“People were like, ‘Oh, you can get a free nose job,'” the TikToker, now 33, recalls to PEOPLE. “It never really occurred to me. I actually always liked my nose.”

However, there wasn’t really any need for physical changes at all, since Lux’s deviated septum was completely internal, she notes. There was no external indication of it at all; her nostrils looked even from the outside.

But since they were opening up her face anyway, Lux had started to think about ways her nose could be better. She decided she wished it had a little more of a “dip” to it, but the doctors said they couldn’t do that. Instead, she simply requested that they make her nose “a little bit cuter.”

Not that she really pressed the issue with her medical team: “We didn’t talk at all about aesthetics. I told them before, I was like, ‘Make it cute,'” Lux admits.

Still, she did kind of expect to wake up with a “nose job nose,” but on the other side of her septoplasty, she looked the same as before. But she was happy that she could breathe better, and it did look fine — for the first year at least.

“It was one of those things that I didn’t really notice changing because it was so gradual,” she explains. “Until one day I looked underneath and it was completely closed on one side.”

The content creator says she’s not completely certain about what the surgeon did internally to eventually cause the nostril to collapse. “I think they tried to straighten out my septum by attaching it to something in the nose,” she guesses.

Lux, who describes herself as particularly “aesthetically driven,” panicked upon realization and knew she had to be extremely cautious as she sought a way to repair the pressed nostril.

“I was shocked. It looked to me like a Voldemort nose,” adds Lux. “I was like, ‘This cannot be. I have to go see a good surgeon.'”

For about $26,000, Lux underwent a rhinoplasty to repair the nostril. Between the first operation and the one to fix it, her nose eventually lost its original shape, the one she liked. Its changed appearance was an unavoidable consequence of the botched surgery.

“At a certain point, it was just so messed up,” Lux reflects. “I had to get a really expensive, fancy nose job after that to fix it.”

It’s been years since Lux’s septoplasty, and while she managed to physically heal, she doesn’t want her experience to fade with those scars. She speaks openly about it so others don’t fall into that same trap, and it continues to become relevant. Lux says she continues to see viral trends suggesting people can dodge sky-high prices and still get solid cosmetic work done.

“I know that everyone’s trying to use insurance to get a septoplasty nose job. Don’t do it. It’s not even worth it. It’s the same thing with teeth. It’s the same thing with everything,” she tells PEOPLE.

Lux says that for her entire adult life, especially after what happened with her own septoplasty, she has been a massive proponent of not saving money when it comes to these types of operations. That’s the key message she was trying to convey when she posted a TikTok showing old photos of her nostril damage this past April.

“I think people are using these cheaper aesthetic options, especially surgeries, as ways to not even have to really consider the consequences. When it’s free, you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take it.’ You don’t think things through,” she adds. “If you have to pay up, then you start considering, okay, who’s the doctor? Who am I seeing? What are the possible repercussions? What exactly do I want to come out of it?”

Lux says she considers herself an “elder” on TikTok, and she’s glad to impart her years of wisdom. She hopes to break up the constant stream of information divulged in quick, compartmentalized ways on social media.

“Nobody shares the full story. They just share little tiny pieces,” she says. If TikTok was around when Lux was 21, she knows she would’ve shared her initial results immediately, well before things took a gradual and alarming turn.

“If I were to have shared my septoplasty nose job journey, I would’ve been like, ‘Great, look at me. I got a free nose job everyone should do it,'” she tells PEOPLE. “Because that’s how information is shared right now. It’s so quick. You don’t get the real ‘after.'”