23 Years Old and Excited but Nervous!! (Lipo-Abdominoplasty, Lipo Thighs & Face, Fat Transfer to Butt, Breast Lift W/ Implants

I am 23 years old, 5'2'', and 175 pounds. I have been suffering from PCOS for a few years now and it's taken a dramatic toll on my body. Before these issues I was at a decent 130 pounds and I was happy like that. However, my hormones have caused me to gain the excess weight. At 23, I should be at the prime of my life, and unfortunately, I feel like I have the body of a 50-60 year old. After spending countless amounts of money on nutritionists, gynecologists, personal trainers, etc. I have still not been able to drop a single pound or shape my body in any way. I realized that it's not food or lack of exercise that is causing my body to look like this. I live a healthy lifestyle and work out 6 days a week so not seeing any results because of my hormones has been extremely depressing. I'm not concerned with the number on the scale anymore, I just want an actual shape to my body back.

My surgery is booked in Beirut (I chose Beirut because I'm Egyptian but I don't trust the doctors in Egypt and Beirut is known for its high standards in this region of the world) for February 4, 2014. I'm extremely nervous, especially with all of the work I have to get done. I have a pretty high pain tolerance but some of what I've been reading sounds downright awful. For those who have gotten both lipo on the stomach and fat transfer to the butt, how can you sit or sleep since you can't put your weight on either? I'm also concerned about the flight back to the United States.

I'll try to work up the courage to post some pictures.

So...I bit the bullet and went ahead and uploaded pictures. My apologies for them not being in the best of lighting, will try to take some more later.

It's hard to even look at these pictures. I keep asking myself...where did my body go?!?! I have never been pregnant or had any kids but yet, because of the issues with my hormones, my body seems to look and act like I have. Luckily, they are now under control. But the damage it has done to my physical appearance needs to be fixed and I'm ready for that.

Does anyone have any similar problems or have been through/are going to go through similar procedures as me? I would love to take everyone's advice.

I went ahead and purchased the Women's 1-A-Day vitamins and ordered some Iron pills as well. I want to make sure that my hemoglobin levels are okay for surgery since I tend to be slightly on the anemic side. Hopefully if I take them every day as I'm supposed to for the next month my levels should be better.

For the ladies that have had these procedures, what garments do you recommend? My surgeon hasn't really given me much information about this. All he said was that a garment would be provided to me 5-7 days after my procedure (because of the TT). Should I be purchasing any myself?

It's exactly a month before my surgery and I have quit smoking. I want to make sure that I do my best to eliminate all things that could possibly cause complications and smoking is one of those things. It's tough but I have the motivation.

I've been a little down about my situation. I bumped up gym time to 2 hours a day 6 days and haven't eaten a carb in I don't know how long. I weighed myself yesterday and I'm still at the EXACT. SAME. WEIGHT.

That's hard to believe especially since I:

1) Don't eat chocolate, candy, or snacks
2) Haven't had a soda in 5 years maybe as I don't like them anyway
3) Come to think of it, I have one glass of juice on Sundays but other than that it's just water water water
4) Eat protein and veggies every meal and that's it
5) Try to burn at least 600+ calories at the gym.

Gym routine:
1) 10 minutes on the treadmill - 2 minutes of fast walking - 2 minutes of sprinting - 2 minutes of fast walking - 2 minutes of sprinting - 2 minutes of fast walking
2) Immediately after the treadmill I get on the elliptical and do the interval training (where resistance levels climb up, hit a plateau, then come back down) at level 7 difficulty level - 5 minutes of speed between 145-150 rpm then 2 minutes of sprinting at 170-180 rpm repeating that for 20 minutes
3) Back to the treadmill - same as above
4) Back to the elliptical - same as above

So basically an hour or so of intense cardio, followed by usually 12 minutes of planks for my abs, and some triceps and biceps lifting.

Please explain to me how this would not show a difference on the scale.

I'm bummed :(

I was hoping to lose 15-20 pounds before my surgery but it looks like it's just not going to happen.

I received my Iron Pills and Compression Socks in the mail today. I started taking my iron right away as I have to get my iron count up in the next 2 1/2 weeks. I'm not sure if it'll make much of a difference in such a short amount of time but it doesn't hurt to try. I've also been eating a lot of spinach as well.

So, my supplies that I have so far are:

1) One-A-Day Women's Formula Multivitamins
2) Iron Pills
3) 1 pair of Compression Socks
4) Button-Down shirts
5) Sweatpants

I have opted to not buy a garment before the procedure. My surgeon told me I would be provided with one and that it was not necessary to bring any so I will take his word for it.

I also want to purchase a pillow to sit on during the flight home but I'm confused. Some people say a boppy some people say a cigar shaped pillow. Any recommendations on which I should get?

I'm getting closer and closer!

I'm laying in the hospital bed with an IV in my arm getting ready for surgery. The nurse gave me a pill to relax but it's not really working. I'm terrified. I hope everything goes smoothly.

I am 2 days post-op. Feeling better but the hospital I am in is the hospital from hell. I love my doctor but this hospital has been abusing me. I will explain in more detail when I have the strength.

Sorry guys,

I have been so focused on dealing with the recovery that I have been unable to update until today. I'll start from the beginning so this will be a long one:

I went to by doctor on the Sunday before my procedure. Upon seeing me in person, he decided that it's best to do a breast lift without implants as that would minimize the risk. I agreed. We settled for doing liposuction of the abdomen and love handles, tummy tuck, breast lift, and butt augmentation with fat. I also snuck it in and asked him if he could lipo my chin and he agreed ;) hehe. I felt totally comfortable with him. I wanted him to do my inner thighs as well but he told me not to touch them because I don't want them to sag. He made me feel much much better about the whole procedure. I felt like he was looking out for my best interest because, in the end, I ended up paying him less than he had quoted and he told me to do less work. He could've agreed to do everything I want and just take my money but he seemed genuinely concerned. He was very nice and made me feel a lot better about myself.

The next day, that Monday, I had my appointment with the anesthesiologist. I got to the hospital and all of a sudden I was so uneasy again. I almost had a panic attack and my mom had to calm me down. I'm not sure why because the hospital looked clean and nice but there was something about it I didn't like. I couldn't place it. Anyway, the appointment honestly was a joke. They didn't do any tests on me except a CBC and that's because I told them to because I was concerned about my iron levels. Looks like taking 3 iron pills a day for that month worked though because hooray! I was at a 13.6

My surgery was the next morning (Tuesday). I barely slept I was so nervous. I got to the hospital at 8 am and checked in. Then they took me to a room, had me take everything off and wear a hospital gown, and started an IV. I kept having to pee from the IV and from nerves. Around 9:45 am they told my mom it was time to go take me to the OR. I was terrified. I started tearing up and my mom had to keep telling me that I was going to be fine.

Here's where things get a little interesting. They roll me in my hospital bed to a room outside the OR. There were 2 other girls in their beds as well but I couldn't see them well to tell if they were pre or post op. Then the OR doors open and another girl is wheeled in. They shake her a bit to tell her it's time to wake up and all of a sudden she starts GASPING. And crying and moaning. Ohhhh the sounds she was making...and they said she had lipo done. So I was sitting there thinking to myself, if this woman sounds like THAT, and only had lipo done, how the hell am I going to be like??? At that point, my whole body was shaking and I was ready to just rip my IV off and run out of there bare assed and all. Luckily, my dr came in and told me it was time. He asked me how I felt and I told him I was terrified. He smiled and told me that it's okay it's normal.

So...they roll me into the OR and the doctor makes me get up out of the bed to do the markings. I also found this a bit weird. He was marking me up while I was staring at my own operating table. I asked him how much fat he thought he was going to take out and he told me 5 liters at least. I thought that sounded like a lot but I put my trust and faith in him. They laid me back down on my bed and the anesthesiologist pressed a mask to my face and told me to breathe in deeply. After that, it was sweet dreams...

I didn't think that I had woken up during the surgery. However, I dreamt during the entire thing which was weird. And later, I had dreams or flashes of instances in the OR but I'm not sure if those were just dreams. I was under for 7 hours. I woke up in the room that I was in before outside the OR, with an oxygen mask on my face and the worst pain in my stomach. My breasts didn't even hurt that much but my stomach was so tight. I was surprised to be in so much pain because I was told that I would be given a morphine injection before they even woke me up. I yelled for morphine over and over and the nurse came over and told me that they had discovered I was allergic to morphine. I begged him to give me something, anything else, and he told me "Like what?" What do you mean like what?! I was shocked that a nurse would ask the patient that. They gave me an injection of something but it was like water and did absolutely nothing for the pain.

And then the hell starts...

I was wheeled by 2 nurses, I male and 1 female, to my recovery room. They put my bed (which was higher than the bed I had to get into) next to the recovery room bed and told me to move myself. I was in so much pain so I kept trying and trying and begging them to let me go slow. My mom came in and I heard her fighting with the nurses to let her see me and they threw her out of the room. The male nurse got frustrated that I was taking so long so he pulled my face up to look at his, told me "MOVE!", had the female nurse pull my arms, and he PUSHED me off the bed. I fell onto the recovery room bed on my stitches and my mom said that she could hear me screaming from down the hallway. She ran into the room as the nurses were leaving, and they had the nerve to ask her to tip them!

The next 3 days were perhaps the worst I've ever had. The first night, my mom begged for a blanket for me, but none of the nurses would give me one. There were times were I would have to press the call button for over 2 hours before I was finally given any pain medicine. My mom had to force nurse to change my urine bag when I had my catheter in because it was always overflowing. My mom helped whenever she could but she couldn't always be there because of the visiting hours and that's when it was the worst. One time, after my Cather was removed, I asked 4-5 different times in a span of about 3 hours to be helped to the restroom and nurses would come and leave and not help me. I almost peed my self in my own bed. The nurses would come in the middle of the night to take my blood pressure, storm in and turn all the lights on, and then storm off without turning the lights off. I would constantly have to hit the call button for them to come back to turn the lights off. Another incident was one of the nurses had me walk and sit in a chair to eat breakfast. She then left me. For 30 minutes I begged and pleaded for a nurse to help me back to my bed. All of them walking by would look at me and then keep walking. I finally used every ounce of strength I had to walk to the call button so that someone would come to help me. I had nail marks up and down my arms from how rough they were being with me. There is a special place in hell for nursing staff that abuse patients.

I finally got fed up and mustered up the strength to email my dr, who had gone to his clinic in a Dubai for a few days. I sent him a full account of what happened along with pictures of the nail marks and bruises from the nurses. Within 10 minutes of sending that email, the head nurse came to speak with me. I was so exhausted, and when my mom lifted my arms to show her the marks, I started crying. It was the first time I had cried during my surgery and it was not from the pain. The head nurse genuinely felt bad for me. She kept hugging me and telling me how sorry she was and that she would not let it continue to happen.

After that, the quality of care did not get better at all. I still had to beg to use the bathroom or get any medicine but at least I wasn't being physically abused anymore. I finally got discharged on Friday and it was such a relief.

I'm tired so I will sleep now. I will write another post tomorrow about my bandages, garments, seeing the doctor post-op, my results, etc.