75 Pounds Down After VSG and Finally A Tummy Tuck! - Baton Rouge, LA

I had the sleeve surgery almost three years ago and lost 75 pounds. I never reached my goal weight but have been at my current weight consistently for the last 2 years. I kept putting off my tummy tuck "just in case" I made it to goal. I finally decided that I should just go talk to my plastic surgeon to see what he said. He basically told me that he wished I'd come in sooner because I was a perfect candidate at my current weight (5'5 190lbs). He told me that the tummy tuck will sometimes kick your body back into weight loss mode and that if we had to do any small revisions later it would be no big deal. I'm excited but terrified. I've been reading everything I can and looking at before and after pictures till my eyes crossed. I wish I could have made it down to 150 before doing this but realistically I might never get there, so why wait for the rest of my life? I'm not sure how my result will look but I'm cautiously optimistic. I'll post pictures afterwards for any of the other women who are at a higher weight like me so you can see what your result may look like.

Here are the pics! Oh the horror!! =O

Finally almost two weeks out and I'm able to sit in the computer room long enough to post this update and some pics. Surgery went great, barely remember anything. Don't really actually remember anything but flashes of the recovery room. No recollection of the ride home or getting into the house. Apparently I slept for about two hours and then my mom woke me up to walk. Walked to my living room and back twice and then got a kitchen chair so I could sit in the living room with my boyfriend and my mom for a little while. Sat there for about 15 minutes and started feeling a little funny. Told them I thought I might be overdoing it a little fast and stood up to go back to bed. My boyfriend let out a loud gasp when I stood up and when I looked to where he was pointing, there was a large puddle of blood on the floor. It had pooled on the seat of the wooden chair I was in and dripped off the side onto the floor. My mom ran to get a wet washcloth to clean me off so we could figure out where the blood was coming from. I started feeling worse and worse and told her I felt like I needed to sit down. From what I'm told now, I sat on the edge of the chair and then passed out. My boyfriend said my face and lips were totally white and my eyes were half open. I was unresponsive and he didn't think I was breathing so he called my PS but got the service. They were asking a lot of questions and he panicked and didn't want to waste time so he hung up on them and called 911.
The whole thing was pretty scary but turned out to be dehydration and the fact that one of the assistants in the ER didn't completely tape the left side of my incision. My PS met us at the ER, checked everything out, taped the wound up and had them discharge me.
Went back for a quick check the next morning which was the day after surgery. He said everything looked great but I was already really swollen. Especially the left side. I asked him why it was hurting so much in that one spot because my abdomen, main incision and right side were barely hurting at all (thank god for Exparel!). He said that in the process of my surgery he decided that the front was going to look better than he initially thought so he decided that I'd be happier if he thinned out my sides a bit so he did some extra lipo. Apparently during that process he said he must have nicked a blood vessel so I wound up with a huge bruise that was unbearably tender to the touch and felt like a softball in my side.
What I've learned from all this is that this surgery, particularly the lipo part, is definitely not for sissy's. It was a really rough recovery for me. The tummy tuck itself was a breeze but add in the muscle repair and lipo and it's a gourmet recipe for a lot of pain. I was barely able to get out of bed for the entire first week. I've since learned that a lot of that pain was due to the fact that he put my right drain tube too close to a nerve so every time I moved my leg too much or bent it, it would hit than nerve and shoot molten lava from my groin down into my leg. Can I just say...OUCH!
I got my right drain out at my one week checkup but the one on the left had to stay because of all the bruising. Hopefully the left comes out tomorrow or I may become homicidal.
I was initially fairly disappointed with what I saw in the mirror but am slowly starting to see glimpses of the end result and I couldn't be happier!
If you had asked me last week if I'd do this again, I'd have said, not no but hell no! I'm feeling a bit different this week as the pain decreases to almost nothing and I can stand up straight and sleep flat again.
I know everyone says not to weigh yourself the first month but I was too curious and I did it. To my surprise, even as swollen as I am, I'm down 12 pounds. Can't wait to see what happens in weeks 3 and 4! =)