25 Year Old With Botched Liposuction, Dr. Barrett Changes My Whole World :) - Beverly Hills, CA

At sixteen, I ended up pregnant. Long story short: while I gave the baby up for adoption, my stomach was irreparably damaged. Covered in stretch marks and a pocket of fat, I was miserable. A few years ago, I decided I was completely sick of feeling self conscious, so I decided to go see a plastic surgeon in New York. I felt like I definitely wanted a tummy tuck to correct the loose skin and stretch marks, but the surgeon convinced me to get liposuction instead. He was certain that I was young enough and my skin was elastic enough that I would have the results I was looking for. He was wrong. While the pocket of fat was gone, my stretch marks were more pronounced and the surgeon had been far too aggressive with the tube so now there was a horrible indentation across my belly button.

I lived with this awful stomach ever since. Recently, I relocated from NY to LA. Being in a beach city, the plastic surgery capital of the country, and only 25, I decided that enough was enough. I was going to get my stomach fixed once and for all. I started calling surgeons and quite a few didn't even bother to schedule a consultation after seeing my photos. The scar tissue and damage done by the previous surgeon "didn't make me a good candidate." But there was no way I was satisfied with that considering they hadn't even seen my stomach in person or felt how loose some of the skin still was.

By happenstance, Dr. Barrett's name popped up in my google results. I was immediately impressed by his pages and pages of five star reviews. Then I called... And for the first time in the weeks I'd been looking, Rosalyn, his patient coordinator, made me feel listened to. She was patient (no pun intended) and wonderful and hilarious, looked at my photos and consulted with Dr. Barrett herself. She never once made me feel like the inconvenience all of the other doctors had. It was an incredible breath of fresh air. Since my first botched surgery, I felt horrible about myself. I covered my stomach religiously even while I was in the shower... And as soon as I met Dr. Barrett, I knew that I was going to be okay. For the first time since sixteen year old me looked in the mirror, aghast at my body, I felt okay.

And I was so incredibly right. Dr. Barrett and Rosalyn are a dream come true and have absolutely changed my life... They answer any and all questions I had: day, night, on the weekends. And this was before surgery! I was really afraid of going through anything similar to the experience in New York. But Dr. Barrett was completely honest: there was a lot of scar tissue and previous damage, but he truly believed that he would get me a great result, by pulling from the very top of my stomach, correcting my badly damaged belly button in the process.

The day of surgery was great. I arrived to the surgery center. Dr Barrett was already there. I got undressed and into a robe and we met solo in a room off to the side to once again talk about the plan, any questions I had, recovery and what exactly was going to happen in the surgery. He was and is incredibly charming, disarming and honest and considering my previous experiences, I couldn't be more thankful. From there, I was brought into the operating room. I met the anesthesiologist and assistant and within minutes, through playful banter and encouragement, I was asleep. Four hours later, I was awoken to the sound of Dr. Barrett telling me what a great job I'd done and that the surgery went very well.

The first few days post op were the hardest. Due to my previous surgery, the tummy tuck was more extensive and as such, my stomach was very tight. I had to sleep hunched over, could barely move, and was in some pretty significant pain, even with the Experol (a numbing agent offered to help reduce pain post op). But Rosalyn and Dr. Barrett were there for me through all of it. Dr. Barrett called me the day of surgery to check in, and they even sent me flowers! I was constantly terrified that moving in even the slightest position was going to cause damage to the result, or mess up what Dr. Barrett had so diligently done -- blame my traumatic previous experience. But each time I had a silly question, Rosalyn was there to check with Dr. Barrett and/or answer it herself. The worst of it was the pain in my back, from being hunched over constantly, butbeing able to chat with Rosalyn whenever I wanted was a great comfort.

It's now been about three weeks post op, and I can't even begin to describe the joy I feel each time I look down at my stomach. Dr. Barrett has continued to show tremendous care at each visit, careful in explaining why he's cleaning certain areas, answering any questions I have about the results and injecting all of it with a sense of humor and happy -- even the stitches were painless to remove and I didn't believe him at first. ;) He keeps telling me how amazing it'll be in three more weeks and I can hardly wait, considering how much I absolutely love it now.