Bad Experience with Abdominoplasty - Mississauga, ON

It is 5 years after my abdominoplasty with Dr. Weinberg, and to this day I still suffer from the botched surgery. At the time, I wanted to stay anonymous, and so did not post that Dr. Weinberg offered me a partial refund of $5000 to take down my online review. I refused and to this day I get angry when I see his manipulate 5 star ratings online. It is important that people know he is paying for good reviews online! This is a serious matter, because having a terrible surgery, terrible results, and terrible post-op care is a serious matter! I hope I can save at least one person from this kind of trauma.

It has been 7 years since my abdominoplasty, and I thought I'd be over what Dr. Michael Weinberg in Mississauga has done to me! The more I think about it, the more things I realize he did. For example, I was an avid marathon runner at that time and a size 4, I had great abs! He should have recommended just removing the loose skin instead of an abdominoplasty, but of course that wouldn't cost as much! His clinic during the consultation promised the surgery would little interfere with my marathon training, and said the recovery time would be a few months! That was such a blatant lie!! It took me about 5 years to recover the full strength of my abdominal muscles! To this day also the bump has not gone away and I have so much scarring! I also look back and am angry that they prescribed opiate based pain medicine after the surgery without telling me what it was! I do better on Tylenol 3 without all of the adverse side affects of an opiate prescription drug! Please anyone considering a plastic surgery, please think of what I didn't at that time, that even reputable surgeons can be very selfish people, highly motivated by money and not caring one iota about your health and well being!

I had an abdominoplasty two years ago with a leading cosmetic surgeon in the Toronto area. I was a marathon runner and a size 4, but after two c-sections and post-pregnancy weight loss had some loose skin that I wanted to have removed. I had a very regrettable experience starting with being rushed to the emergency room after the procedure due to my blood pressure dropping dramatically, to receiving less than adequate post-op care, all the way to the cosmetic surgeon not fulfilling the promises he made in my pre-op consultation, and basically leaving me looking far worse after the procedure than previously, and this after the trauma of an invasive surgery and over $8000 of expense.

I realize that everyone's experience will be different, but please consider how your life may in fact be derailed by an abdominoplasty and all the risks that the invasive procedure entails, all weighed against what improvements you may or may not experience to your physical appearance and life satisfaction. I also feel that while cosmetic surgeons may be very caring in the initial consultation, there is very little incentive for them to provide excellent post-operative care if things go wrong.

At this point in time, you basically become a cost and an inconvenience to the service provider, that at least was my personal experience. Some specific advice would be to keep copies of any pre-op consultation diagrams and promises, as well as seeking details about promises such as not needing the drainage bottles after the procedure. My surgeon told me in the consultation that he has a very advanced method and so does not need to rely on the drainage bottles, which sounded too good to be true and it was, as I experienced over 15 lbs of post-op fluid retention that was very uncomfortable and caused stretch marks.

Furthermore, if you have an issue with the results of your abdominoplasty, and your surgeon is not responsive to your concerns in your post-op visits, please do keep in mind that there is a statutory limitation of two years to claim any compensation in hopes of getting the issues corrected with another cosmetic surgeon. In my experience, I felt that my surgeon brushed me off and then dragged out our discussions about a partial refund to have serious problems with the results corrected by another surgeon up until the point where when I finally in despair went to a lawyer learned that I could no longer take it to small claims court as the statutory limitation period has passed, something that I am sure the surgeon was well aware of as he had his lawyer communicate with me in the previous discussions and as he has had many years under his belt in his practice and I suspect I am not the first person that has had problematic results.

I thought I was well-informed before my abdominoplasty, but I was also trusting. Please remember this kind of surgery is still a profit making enterprise, and beware of any promises that seem too good to be true, and take action to protect yourself if things do not go as expected, as there is a very short period of time to claim any losses if you are left looking worse than before. I will have to get some better photos, but you can see that a significant bump was left on the bottom of my abdomen that was never corrected, and also on the other side there is significant scarring due to poor post-op care and advise on return to activity in my opinion.