Fleur De Lis (Tummy Tuck), Arm Lift & Belt Lipectomy After Maintaining 100+ Lb Weight Loss - Cary, NC

I spent my entire childhood overweight and at age 18, upon graduation, I made a decision not to go away to college overweight. In a matter of 3 months through extreme dieting and lots of walking, I dropped 120 lbs. Over the years I was able to mainain my weight loss through portion control and exercise (cardio and weight training). No matter how fit I got, I would always have remnants of the fat girl that I once was without surgery to remove the excess skin.

I had a couple consultations with doctors in the Wilmington, NC area but was just not impressed so stumbled on this site to do more research. I read amazing reviews of Dr. Stoeckel at Wake Plastic Surgery so scheduled a consult. His office was 2 hrs away from my home but well worth the added drive time. Woohoo - surgery was scheduled for December 24, 2013!

Dr. Stoeckel recommended a Fleur de Lis in order to get the best results - scars at my age were not an issue! I'll be sure to post pics and keep you up to date with my progress.

These pictures are totally overdue but hope will be a benefit to others! Arm Lift was done in Sept 2014 and recovery was a breeze. Dr. S does lipo prior to removing the excess skin and since I had strength trained for years prior, most the fat was gone which may have aided in my recovery. Apparently the lipo can cause a lot of pain in recovery.

Procedure included an incision just under the breasts to remove what I call the bra fat hanging from the sides (this bothered me more than my bat wings!). At consult, Dr. S thought I might even benefit from a little bonus breast lift with this procedure. He was right on...we were both impressed with the little lift!

Like I said my recovery was a breeze and that was with me moving boxes and assembling a bedframe solo only a couple days after surgery. I'm fortunate that all the heavy lifting didn't affect my results. There is one little pucker that I may ask if a revision would help and curious if a little lipo might reduce the bulk on the left side. Regardless I am so happy with the results!

You can see in the 1 and 2 week pics that there was very little bruising from the lipo. I need to take some recent pics to show where I'm at with scarring.

I just had a belt lipectomy on 11/19 to remove excess skin from hips and rear midsection. My first experience w/drains and I have to milk/strip the drains a couple times a day to get the fluid in the bulb. I was expecting the bulb to fill on its own. Not much fluid is draining but could be from extensive lipo. I am sore from lipo. As in tummy tuck, it is a little painful getting in and out of bed but really manageable. Today is day 3, lots of stiffness and wake every 2-3 hrs.