Report on the plastic surgery & recovery

It has now been 18 days since my plastic surgery.

Surgery took 6 hours. After surgery they kept me in recovery for a few hours and they sent me home with my husband. He brought me home; I walked in and got set up in the recliner. I slept in the recliner every night for about a week and a half. For the first few days I needed help (from my hubby) getting up from a seated position. After about 3 days I was able to get up by myself.

The surgeon removed nearly 17 pounds of combined skin and fat! (yes, he did some liposuction) He also moved some of the tissues from under my arms to the front and side of my breasts during the breast lift. Boy! Are my breasts full and uplifted! It seems like I mainly need a bra to support while the area is healing. When I go braless for very long, I get a nudging discomfort in my breasts. So, I wear a sports bra during the day and a leisure bra at night.

My tummy is something else! Without the part of my tummy that used to hang down my legs, well it’s hard to describe. My lower tummy is smooth. However my midriff still sticks out a little. You’ll be able to see it in the picture that I post.

The first drain was removed 8 days after surgery. Second drain removed 3 days later. However the most active drain actually pulled out on its own the next night. (It might have been pulled by my adjusting the compression garment which probably hit the drain.)
The fourth drain was removed on the 15th day after the surgery.

Last Friday (after that last drain was removed) I should have been able to switch to the panty type girdle, but the one I had pre-ordered turned out to be about 2 sizes too large. It didn’t compress my tummy enough. Unfortunately, by the time we discovered this, it was late on Friday and too late to call the company for a replacement girdle. (The company is located in New York!) Worse yet, it was the Friday before Labor Day and the company wouldn’t be open until TUESDAY! So, I have to endure the whole weekend with the compression garment that rides up on my hips and is so tight and uncomfortable. Luckily, I was able to find a store in town that might have the same kind of girdle that I can actually pick up on Tuesday morning. I phoned them too late to go to the store on Friday, but I made an appointment for Tuesday morning (that’s tomorrow morning). I hope they have at least one that fits me tomorrow; otherwise, I’ll have to telephone an order and pay extra shipping and hopefully I’ll have the girdle by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. (I also expect to be able to return the ones I already have that are too big.)

Well, it’s one more night to try to sleep while fighting to keep this garment from riding up on my hips and making a crease on my incision line. I hope tomorrow night I’ll have a better night’s sleep.

That’s all for now. I’ll post again after I see if I get that girdle in the morning.

Here's how I look now, after my tummy tuck and breast lift. This picture was taken 16 days after surgery.

My Plastic surgery happens tomorrow morning!!

Here I am, after weighing over 310 pounds for many years (I'm 5'1" tall) and I had RNY WLS a little over 2 years ago, and I lost 125 pounds total, I'm finally ready to have my hanging tummy removed (or at least, lifted). I’m also scheduled for a breast lift, because they droop too much from both excess weight and my age (I’m 52 years old).

OK, I realize that I'm not at an ideal weight (I currently weigh 190), but I've lost a lot of weight and I'm really ready for this. Plus, the surgeon I have chosen has done tummy tucks on other patients as heavy as me, and had good results. Actually, he specializes in working on people who have lost over 100 pounds, mostly WLS patients.

My husband just finished taking [nude] pictures of me for my own set of "before" pictures, and UGH!! I can see how much I hate the look of my stretched out body. I am doing this mostly because I hate the FEEL of my stretched out body, especially the way my tummy hangs halfway to my knees.

NO--I will not post any of these nude pictures in my blog, but I will take some good shots with form fitting clothes after I recover and post those in the blog.

I'm supposed to show up at the Plastic Surgery Center (in Sacramento, California) tomorrow morning at 6:30 am; surgery is scheduled to start at 7:30. They say that surgery cannot take any longer than 6 hours, and then they will keep me in their recovery for a few hours before sending me home with hubby.

Doctor told me that he may have to take the full amount of time to do just my tummy and he might not be able to do my breast lift too. But as far as I'm concerned, my tummy is my first priority. If that happens, I plan to go back and have the breast lift sometime later.

I’m a little scared, but mostly excited. I’m fearing the worse (complications that will send me to the regular hospital) but I feel that if I fear the worse, the best will happen (I will just go home and heal as I should).

I am not frightened by the pain . . . I do tend to manage pain pretty well, and I know there are the drugs (Vicodin) of course! And my dear husband will be around to help me through this too. (He will be a great source of comfort and strength.)

Well, that’s enough of a post for now. I’ll post again after I recover enough to come back upstairs (in my house, to my computer) and sit at the computer to type an update.

---Sandi H. in Citrus Heights, California

Plastic Surgery next Thursday!

I’m doing it!! I’m scheduled for my tummy tuck and breast lift for NEXT THURSDAY, August 17th!! (I need to show up at 6:30 am.)

Dr. Scott Green (at the Sacramento Plastic Surgery Center) will do the operation. He says that I will probably loose my belly button, but I don’t mind – as long as I loose the “pannis” hanging tummy!

I’m excited and a little scared. But not too scared; it’s my 4th major surgery in my life, and I’ve got quite a bit of faith in doctors.

After this surgery, and after I recover, I’ll post a new picture. In the meantime, I’ve got to get everything ready for this, clean my house, get stuff in order so my husband can take care of me and everything for the day’s I’m doped up on pain killers (LOL). He will also have to help me stand up and sit down (including in the bathroom) so I don’t have to use my stomach muscles while I’m healing.

Well, that’s all I want to say for now; just wanted to update my blog.
:-)- Sandi

Sandiantoytrain

I've been having some problems with my weight for the past 6 months. Since the planning for my daughter's wedding, I sort of fell off my exercise routine and let myself indulge in too much of the wrong foods -- carbohydrates. I've gradually gained back 15 pounds or so, my current weight is up to 190 pounds.

However, I've been increasingly frustrated by my hanging tummy (pannis) which seems to hang nearly halfway down to my knees and looks ugly (to me) under my slacks.

So I finally too the plunge and scheduled a couple of consultations with plastic surgeons. I saw the Kaiser plastic surgeon last Friday (March 24th). He said I need to loose at least 45 pounds before he would be able to do a tummy tuck on me. Well, at least now I have a goal.

I made another appointment with Dr. Green, who is a noted plastic surugeon in the Sacramento/Roseville area for doing great work on people who have lost large amounts of weight, especially over 100 pounds. He's got a great reputation and I know several people who have had tummy tucks as well as breast lifts and even one guy who had male breast removal. All I hear is good things about him. However the earliest appointment I could make with him is for April 20th. I want to find out how much weight he thinks I should loose before he will do the tummy tuck on me.

On top of all this, I caught a cold last week and I've been trying to drink lots of water and hot medicinal tea, and I've been using the steamer at night. I haven't felt like exercising much either. I hope this doesn't mess up my weight loss efforts this week.

As soon as I can get rid of this cold I plan on getting back to going to the gym at least 3 times a week and exercising at home again every morning and evening.

Well, that's my update for now.
--Sandi

I've got an ulcer! (not caused by the WLS)

Sunday morning, I fainted. I was sitting on the edge of my bed and fell forward and hit my face on the TV tray (I keep next to the bed) and cut my lip and bruised my forehead and knocked my glasses out of adjustment (not breaking them, though). My husband was right there when I fell, and he tells me I was only out for less than a minute; he didn't even have time to call 9-1-1. (But this really scared the sh**t out of him!)

After recovering, I went downstairs and ate a little food (protein drink), thinking it might be low blood sugar, but I still stayed so weak that I ended up going to the emergency room. They found I had a low blood count and I had been passing blood in my stool. (I didn't take it seriously when I saw I had a BM with black stool on Saturday, I thought it was just a reaction to some very spicy food I had eaten earlier in the week.)

They admitted me to the hospital, and because of the low blood count they gave me 2 units of blood Sunday night. Monday afternoon they did an upper endoscope and found I have an "acute duodenal ulcer bleed". I was given two types of medicine (Prilosec & Carafate) to help heal and avoid future ulcer problems. I was kept in the hospital one more night (on that darn hard hospital bed with an IV needle sticking in my arm, it was hard to get comfortable enough to sleep through the night).

The gastroenterologist told me that the ulcer is located just past my pouch in my small intestine. (He assured me that he's done lots of these endoscopes to gastric bypass patients.) He suspects that there might be some bacteria there that caused the ulcer, he took a biopsy sample, but I won't have the result of that for a week. He didn't think it was caused by stress or spicy foods, though.

I got to go home this morning (Tuesday), the doctor actually said I could go back to work tomorrow, but I think I need to be sure, so the doctor gave me a release from work for tomorrow too, and if I feel good enough, I expect to return to work on Thursday.

Now that I'm home with the discharge instructions (you know what I need to do for myself now that I'm out of the hospital) I got to figure out a schedule for the medicines (that I need to take on an empty stomach) and my meals & vitamins. It's much more restrictive than before, and because I don't want to mess up on these meds (I really do NOT want this ulcer), well, it really keeps me on my eating plan. NO eating between meals on this plan! That's a good thing, I guess (LOL). Also, because they only fed me clear liquids, I might have lost a few pounds this week. Another good thing!

Tomorrow I want to try to get back on my exercise schedule. I hope my husband feels comfortable enough for me to go back to the gym tomorrow, he's a little protective of me. As I said before, seeing me faint really scared him! After all, he thought this WLS surgery I had almost 14 months ago was really going to improve my health, and it did, overall, but neither of us expected me to develop an ulcer, and a bleeding one, at that!

I need to go back to my PCP (primary care physician) next Tuesday for further follow-up, and to find out the results of the biopsy.

Oh, yeah, tomorrow I really need to get my glasses re-adjusted. I did kind of smash them a little, and they're really out of adjustment. I've been using my old glasses, but they're not quite as good a prescription as the ones I smashed.

--Sandi H. (Citrus Heights)
Surgery by Dr. Leo Murphy (San Diego)
weighed 315 at orientation (May '03) -- BMI 60
252 at surgery (06/03/04) --BMI 46.1
last weighed at 174.5 (07/23/05) --BMI 33.0
(I've lost a total of 140.5 pounds!!!! 77.5 pounds since surgery.)
I'm 5'1" tall.

June 8, 2005, 176.5 pounds