Smart Lipo: Stories

I had smart lipo performed yesterday 8-12-11. I had it done on my upper and lower abs. The procedure took all of 30 minutes and the total time spent at their office was about 2 hours, then I had an hour drive home. Although I am swollen, I can already see a tremendous difference.

I was in pain the first day and the day afterwards, but I feel pretty good today (Day 3). At certain points the swelling goes down, depending on how much I move around in a day and you can really tell the difference when the swelling is down.

I am so far very satisfied with my experience and can't wait until I have final results since I'm already satisfied with what I see currently!

So it has now been a week and a half since my smart lipo. I must say, 5 days ago I came down with the flu and a severe sinus infection and have had to go to my PCP 3 different occasions and have my meds changed 3 times due to an allergic reaction to one antibiotic with a shot I had and getting horribly sick to my stomach from another antibiotic. Needless to say, this has not helped my healing process from the smart lipo and I wasn't able to wear my binder as much as I should have for a few days. I called my surgeon who did my smart lipo while I was sick because I was concerned at first it was an infection from my procedure, but he was so nice and reassuring and really put my mind at ease. He took time out of his weekend to call me back and even told me to call him the next day and let him know how I was doing, even though it was something completely unrelated.

All of that out of the way, my stomach looks good still. I have definitely noticed more swelling and it seems to stay swollen afternoon and evenings. Due to how bad I was sick, my stomach pain from the smart lipo rarely bothered me. I would say it was a more of a tender feeling and I've still been cautious about how quickly I move and when I'm playing with my 1 year old. There are lumps and bumps that come and go. I have my husband massage my stomach for me often and this seems to help. It really loosens up the bumps and helps with the tightness. Other than that there isn't much change. My stomach does look worse now than it does in my after pictures because I am more swollen, but the nurses have reassured me that it will return to that again once all the swelling has gone down and it has had time to heal. I know I need to be patient, afterall, it hasn't even been 2 weeks yet since my procedure.

I am 3 weeks and 5 days post smart lipo. I stopped wearing my garment at 3 weeks during the day, but I still wear it at night. Like before, my belly looks wonderful in the mornings and then the swelling starts to get worse as the day goes on. Most of it has subsided, but there are still spots right around my middle belly that are hard and raised. Most of the lumpiness that I talked about previously has subsided which is nice. I've also noticed just within the last day or so that since the swelling has gone down, my skin seems more lax and this worries me a little. I know they said the skin tightening continues to get better and better over 3-6 months, but I was loving my results and I don't want to loose what I was seeing before. Hopefully it continues to stay the way I like it! I posted several new pictures that were taken a week post-procedure and some more recently. The pictures don't seem to do any justice though because I feel like my stomach looks better looking at it in the mirror than it does with the camera. My husband also agrees with this.

Tomorrow I will be 6 weeks post smart lipo. I had my follow up visit on Monday, a little later than normal, and I saw the nurse due to the doctor having an emergency call. She thinks things are going as they should be. I still have swelling around my belly button that seems to stay consistent, it doesn't really go down at all and that is where I feel the majority of my lumps. I rarely have swelling on my upper abs and down past my belly button and towards my pelvic region is swollen mostly at night still. My stomach is still sensitive to some touches. I'm still happy with my results, but I'm getting anxious for the rest of the this swelling to go down. It's like I hit a plateau after a lot of the swelling started to decrease. The nurse also advised me that the lax in my skin will continue to tighten and can take 3-6 months (as I'm sure we are all tired of hearing! lol). I guess I will just be patient and be happy for the fact that my stomach still looks so much better than before and I weigh 8 pounds less!

I am almost 3 1/2 months post smart lipo. Not much has changed since I last updated. I have been sort of out of the loop on updating.

I had a visit with the doctor on October 17th and he said I still had some swelling, which I believe has subsided now mostly and that the lumps around my belly button should continue to improve. Well...they haven't. They still look the same and so he told me we may have to do some touch ups on those areas. I don't know if I will go through with it or not because overall my belly looks better and I just don't want to go through the whole procedure again.

I would say I'm 75% happy with my overall outcome. I'm hoping it will continue to improve through the 6 month mark like they say it's supposed to. I am able to wear tighter shirts than before without having to worry about a huge belly roll. The skin tightening is not as great as I had hoped, but it's better than before.

It has been almost exactly 5 months since having smart lipo. I had been feeling pretty down and out after 3 months because I hadn't seen much difference in quite some time and it still felt as though I was swollen in my lower abdomen. I still have bumps around my belly button area, but they seem to have improved slightly since I began a tough exercise program and have cut out all carbonated drinks.

Since January 1st (New Year's Resolution time haha), I have been working out and eating healthy. I feel like my stomach has already begun to look slightly better than it did around Christmas time and it's only been 2 weeks of working very hard. I plan on keeping up with this and hope that my stomach flattens out just a little bit more.

Overall I would say I am happy with having the smart lipo. I know I look better than I did before and I no longer look 5 months pregnant. I feel like I could look better though and this is why I have begun to change my ways! I don't want to have SL again and so I'm hoping to get rid of the last little bit of flab on my own. I've uploaded pictures as well!