Reviews you can trust, from real people like you.
How it works
- Our highly-trained Review Moderation team evaluates all reviews before they're published to ensure they're written by people like you and not a member of a doctor's office.
- This multi-step process takes up to 24 hours from review submission to publication.
- Doctors can't pay to have reviews removed or hidden.
- Reviews are only removed at the reviewer's request or if they violate our Terms of Service.
If you have questions or believe we should re-evaluate a published review, let us know.
Sort by:
*Treatment results may vary
Most expensive mistake I’ve made
Hello, my experience with Dr. Medina happened on 1/7. Out of respect for their statements when I expressed my concerns, I have waited 6 weeks to see my current results (which are way worse than my initial figure as well as my initial post op figure).
Here is the unedited review I wrote while in the DR. I didn’t post it earlier for safety reasons since I stayed in the recovery house there.
—————————————————
Review
Sorry this is so long... just want to prevent other girls from experiencing what I did! If you care about your time, your result, and your money, go to another doctor.
So I’ve waited to review until I cold talk to all the other girls in the recovery house who were done by Medina, and now that I have I can honestly say I wouldn’t recommend anyone to go to her if they want to achieve a good result.
I’ll give you a play by play of my time since the 7th... only things I think are important for others to know as they make decisions.
In the afternoon I sign the paperwork and pay the cost. I ask for a copy of what I signed and they said they didn’t have it. In the evening, I had tons of tests with different doctors but had none of my results shown to me or told to me. During the lung test I see a piece of paper that has all our names on it for the next day, there are 6 of us. This checks out with the number of girls I saw getting tests and sitting in Medina’s waiting room. At least 3 of them were lipo/bbl/tummy tuck. So you do the math, if we assume 2 hours for lipo/bbl and 3 for tummy tuck/lipo/bbl, do you really think she is doing ~15 hours straight of surgery? Anyway... 8pm a driver drove me to another clinic (CECIP) to get blood drawn for my thyroid because I think they forgot/didn’t read my paperwork which said over and over I had hypothyroidism. Never heard the results of that test either. Upon return I found a white cat in my room (where I am taken after surgery) and alerted the nurse who shooed it out. I am astonished that pets are allowed to roam around the surgery center. That nurse was the only nurse there who spoke English and left the next morning. That night (Sunday) it seemed the male/female doctors were having a party at the front desk which was right outside my room. Lots of loud talking and music late into the evening.
Monday I am awoken by Medina who comes in but doesn’t introduce herself and asks me if I have questions. This is the first time I’ve met or seen her. I’ve just woken up and was flustered but asked about my Venus dimples and mentioned a few things about what I wanted (the dents in the top of my butt filled out, the silhouette from the front smoothed out, etc). The entire time she is writing on a clip board. She tells me to get up so she can mark me. She exclaims “oh so skinny” as if she hasn’t even seen my pictures. She starts pinching at me and telling me I don’t have enough fat and that my results aren’t going to be dramatic. I ask her to do my thighs, she says they’re too skinny there won’t be a difference. She proceeds to mark me. A couple hash marks in each armpit because she said there’s no fat there. Then two long straight vertical lines on my front from my armpit to my hipbone on each side. She hands me the clip board (where I thought she was writing notes on what I wanted) but she had hand written out 5 or 6 points that basically say we don’t guarantee good results, symmetrical results, or dramatic results due to small amount of fat and the way your body naturally is. She hands it to me to sign it. At this point what am I going to do, I’ve flown 10 hours, done tons of tests, and paid $5500 and am already in a hospital gown hooked to an IV...so I sign it. She gets up to leave and I was like “wait am I going first?” and she said, “your surgery is at 9” and left. She was in my room tops 4 minutes.
After she leaves I decide that if I want my thighs done, I am going to ask for it despite what she thinks. So i open the door with my arm outstretched towards the bed where the IV is (because the calling system to alert the nurses is broken.. which on an unrelated note caused severe problems for other girls I met, one whose IV fell out and she yelled and yelled before they came and bled everywhere and had to change her outfit, another who yelled for 30 minutes at night until another patient sent her own personal nurse to help her when no one came). Anyway... no one speaks English but finally someone sent a young male doctor over who spoke English and I explained to him I needed to see Medina again (this is like 5 min after she left my room). He said Medina isn’t here. I assured him she was since she just marked me. He said I should just message her if I have her number. I said okay but I get surgery today can you ensure you tell her I want my thighs done? He said he would. I message her (pics attached). They bring me the blue pill, I ask what it is, they don’t speak English. They give me something else I don’t know in my IV. They wheel me to the OR, past another OR where I can see a male doctor is lipoing someone else (it seemed like only Medina patients staying there that night....). In the OR Medina is no where to be seen. The next memory I have is trying to uncover my head to see who is lipoing me and them not letting me lift the sheet thing. After that I remember waking up in my room and being in huge amounts of pain. My door was open and for the next 20 min or so I’m sitting there crying and calling to anyone who walks by. A couple people come in and I explain I’m in huge amounts of pain and struggling to breathe, but they don’t speak English. They leave and don’t tell anyone else to come. Finally some nurse walks by comes in and I mime pain and she comes back and injects something into my IV. I ask what. No response as she doesn’t speak English. I’ve had surgeries before, I don’t know what they were injecting us with, but after talking to all the other girls at the recovery house, their “pain med” literally did nothing. Like not even the equivalent of a few Advil.
I fall asleep. When I wake up I check my phone to see a WhatsApp message from Medina from 11:30 am that day: “Hello dear. Please send me front, back and both sides pictures to evaluate you hun.” I am dismayed as I thought I was talking to the person who just cut me open, but whoever this is doesn’t even know me. My response is “You did surgery on me this morning. My name is ———- . I asked one of the people outside if I could ask you another question and they said to message you. When I didn’t get a response before I left I mentioned it to the same young guy who was the last to ask me questions to tell you I wanted my thighs done and he said he would but I don’t think he did. Which is really frustrating.” I get no response from that number. So I message Marielle (her coordinator). I explain the situation and she asks, “what number” (see pics) and once I say my thighs weren’t lipoed she responds immediately “You bleed a lot during surgery. So it was imposible to do it. It was so risky.” She told me “You bleed more with lipo than with the tummy tuck”. By the way I didn’t need any blood transfusions. But it seems the consensus among all the women here at the recovery house is that you bleed more during tummy tuck. One girl said Marielle told her the opposite, that she couldn’t get her tummy tuck because she would bleed too much but she could get lipo/bbl. I honestly think that they don’t do a good job or all the areas you request/pay for because they have so many patients they don’t have time. The general consensus among all of us at the recovery house from discussing and comparing timelines is that she isn’t doing the surgeries herself.
The rest of my time at CECILIP was about the same as above. The only thing of note is Medina comes into my room Tuesday morning like 6am flips on my light and hands me a pin and is like here is your Barbie pin and leaves.
The recovery house has been excellent over the last five days! Friendly, English speaking staff. A call system that works, good food, good massages, honest nurses. I highly recommend it.
Other things I’ve learned from being in the recovery house.... Medina sees all her 3 day post op patients at 9am on the third day. My third day was when my roommate and several other girls from the house had surgery. (How are you in surgery AND seeing post op patients at the same time....?) My post op was done by another doctor/nurse who took me out of my faja and removed the bandages and said I looked good, then started putting it back on, then Medina shows up so the first doctor takes my faja back off. I don’t even remember what Medina said, she was there for about 30 seconds.
Other overall impressions:a
-communication is TERRIBLE, you are alerted to your post op appointments the night before, but the time isn’t accurate.. you will be picked up around that time or maybe before and you go to the clinic and wait for each person to go. Takes several hours.
-George the driver is very nice and has WiFi in his van. However, he is the only one who speaks English. The rest of the drivers seem to come and go based on what George tells them. They were all friendly.
-the one girl in the recovery house who wasn’t done by Medina looked awesome... everyone else I talked with had similar experiences to mine and was NOT happy
-the pain med they give you here for after is enantyum (an NSAID) which is NOT suitable if you are getting a tummy tuck, you can probably manage if you just get lipo/bbl but you’ll be very uncomfortable... the women who had tummy tucks and didn’t bring their own pain killers were truly miserable. So if you still insist on Dominican Republic or Medina bring your own pain meds!
-the meds are another $450-$500 and you buy them once you get to the recovery house
-most of the [RS bleep] I brought I didn’t need... things I didn’t use at all: pads (didn’t leak at all), bandaids/gauze/tape/neosporin (incisions tiny with one stitch in them and covered in tape until closed), female urinal (you can sit down if you don’t get a tummy tuck)... basically the only things I used: baby wipes/personal wipes, Arnica gel, Tylenol, iron, vitamin c, laxatives, large undies, tank tops for under faja (I had to go buy these because no one told me to bring them), bbl pillow (note it’s super hard to sit on... boppy pillows seem to be better, especially if you get a tummy tuck), my clothes and toiletries
Here is the unedited review I wrote while in the DR. I didn’t post it earlier for safety reasons since I stayed in the recovery house there.
—————————————————
Review
Sorry this is so long... just want to prevent other girls from experiencing what I did! If you care about your time, your result, and your money, go to another doctor.
So I’ve waited to review until I cold talk to all the other girls in the recovery house who were done by Medina, and now that I have I can honestly say I wouldn’t recommend anyone to go to her if they want to achieve a good result.
I’ll give you a play by play of my time since the 7th... only things I think are important for others to know as they make decisions.
In the afternoon I sign the paperwork and pay the cost. I ask for a copy of what I signed and they said they didn’t have it. In the evening, I had tons of tests with different doctors but had none of my results shown to me or told to me. During the lung test I see a piece of paper that has all our names on it for the next day, there are 6 of us. This checks out with the number of girls I saw getting tests and sitting in Medina’s waiting room. At least 3 of them were lipo/bbl/tummy tuck. So you do the math, if we assume 2 hours for lipo/bbl and 3 for tummy tuck/lipo/bbl, do you really think she is doing ~15 hours straight of surgery? Anyway... 8pm a driver drove me to another clinic (CECIP) to get blood drawn for my thyroid because I think they forgot/didn’t read my paperwork which said over and over I had hypothyroidism. Never heard the results of that test either. Upon return I found a white cat in my room (where I am taken after surgery) and alerted the nurse who shooed it out. I am astonished that pets are allowed to roam around the surgery center. That nurse was the only nurse there who spoke English and left the next morning. That night (Sunday) it seemed the male/female doctors were having a party at the front desk which was right outside my room. Lots of loud talking and music late into the evening.
Monday I am awoken by Medina who comes in but doesn’t introduce herself and asks me if I have questions. This is the first time I’ve met or seen her. I’ve just woken up and was flustered but asked about my Venus dimples and mentioned a few things about what I wanted (the dents in the top of my butt filled out, the silhouette from the front smoothed out, etc). The entire time she is writing on a clip board. She tells me to get up so she can mark me. She exclaims “oh so skinny” as if she hasn’t even seen my pictures. She starts pinching at me and telling me I don’t have enough fat and that my results aren’t going to be dramatic. I ask her to do my thighs, she says they’re too skinny there won’t be a difference. She proceeds to mark me. A couple hash marks in each armpit because she said there’s no fat there. Then two long straight vertical lines on my front from my armpit to my hipbone on each side. She hands me the clip board (where I thought she was writing notes on what I wanted) but she had hand written out 5 or 6 points that basically say we don’t guarantee good results, symmetrical results, or dramatic results due to small amount of fat and the way your body naturally is. She hands it to me to sign it. At this point what am I going to do, I’ve flown 10 hours, done tons of tests, and paid $5500 and am already in a hospital gown hooked to an IV...so I sign it. She gets up to leave and I was like “wait am I going first?” and she said, “your surgery is at 9” and left. She was in my room tops 4 minutes.
After she leaves I decide that if I want my thighs done, I am going to ask for it despite what she thinks. So i open the door with my arm outstretched towards the bed where the IV is (because the calling system to alert the nurses is broken.. which on an unrelated note caused severe problems for other girls I met, one whose IV fell out and she yelled and yelled before they came and bled everywhere and had to change her outfit, another who yelled for 30 minutes at night until another patient sent her own personal nurse to help her when no one came). Anyway... no one speaks English but finally someone sent a young male doctor over who spoke English and I explained to him I needed to see Medina again (this is like 5 min after she left my room). He said Medina isn’t here. I assured him she was since she just marked me. He said I should just message her if I have her number. I said okay but I get surgery today can you ensure you tell her I want my thighs done? He said he would. I message her (pics attached). They bring me the blue pill, I ask what it is, they don’t speak English. They give me something else I don’t know in my IV. They wheel me to the OR, past another OR where I can see a male doctor is lipoing someone else (it seemed like only Medina patients staying there that night....). In the OR Medina is no where to be seen. The next memory I have is trying to uncover my head to see who is lipoing me and them not letting me lift the sheet thing. After that I remember waking up in my room and being in huge amounts of pain. My door was open and for the next 20 min or so I’m sitting there crying and calling to anyone who walks by. A couple people come in and I explain I’m in huge amounts of pain and struggling to breathe, but they don’t speak English. They leave and don’t tell anyone else to come. Finally some nurse walks by comes in and I mime pain and she comes back and injects something into my IV. I ask what. No response as she doesn’t speak English. I’ve had surgeries before, I don’t know what they were injecting us with, but after talking to all the other girls at the recovery house, their “pain med” literally did nothing. Like not even the equivalent of a few Advil.
I fall asleep. When I wake up I check my phone to see a WhatsApp message from Medina from 11:30 am that day: “Hello dear. Please send me front, back and both sides pictures to evaluate you hun.” I am dismayed as I thought I was talking to the person who just cut me open, but whoever this is doesn’t even know me. My response is “You did surgery on me this morning. My name is ———- . I asked one of the people outside if I could ask you another question and they said to message you. When I didn’t get a response before I left I mentioned it to the same young guy who was the last to ask me questions to tell you I wanted my thighs done and he said he would but I don’t think he did. Which is really frustrating.” I get no response from that number. So I message Marielle (her coordinator). I explain the situation and she asks, “what number” (see pics) and once I say my thighs weren’t lipoed she responds immediately “You bleed a lot during surgery. So it was imposible to do it. It was so risky.” She told me “You bleed more with lipo than with the tummy tuck”. By the way I didn’t need any blood transfusions. But it seems the consensus among all the women here at the recovery house is that you bleed more during tummy tuck. One girl said Marielle told her the opposite, that she couldn’t get her tummy tuck because she would bleed too much but she could get lipo/bbl. I honestly think that they don’t do a good job or all the areas you request/pay for because they have so many patients they don’t have time. The general consensus among all of us at the recovery house from discussing and comparing timelines is that she isn’t doing the surgeries herself.
The rest of my time at CECILIP was about the same as above. The only thing of note is Medina comes into my room Tuesday morning like 6am flips on my light and hands me a pin and is like here is your Barbie pin and leaves.
The recovery house has been excellent over the last five days! Friendly, English speaking staff. A call system that works, good food, good massages, honest nurses. I highly recommend it.
Other things I’ve learned from being in the recovery house.... Medina sees all her 3 day post op patients at 9am on the third day. My third day was when my roommate and several other girls from the house had surgery. (How are you in surgery AND seeing post op patients at the same time....?) My post op was done by another doctor/nurse who took me out of my faja and removed the bandages and said I looked good, then started putting it back on, then Medina shows up so the first doctor takes my faja back off. I don’t even remember what Medina said, she was there for about 30 seconds.
Other overall impressions:a
-communication is TERRIBLE, you are alerted to your post op appointments the night before, but the time isn’t accurate.. you will be picked up around that time or maybe before and you go to the clinic and wait for each person to go. Takes several hours.
-George the driver is very nice and has WiFi in his van. However, he is the only one who speaks English. The rest of the drivers seem to come and go based on what George tells them. They were all friendly.
-the one girl in the recovery house who wasn’t done by Medina looked awesome... everyone else I talked with had similar experiences to mine and was NOT happy
-the pain med they give you here for after is enantyum (an NSAID) which is NOT suitable if you are getting a tummy tuck, you can probably manage if you just get lipo/bbl but you’ll be very uncomfortable... the women who had tummy tucks and didn’t bring their own pain killers were truly miserable. So if you still insist on Dominican Republic or Medina bring your own pain meds!
-the meds are another $450-$500 and you buy them once you get to the recovery house
-most of the [RS bleep] I brought I didn’t need... things I didn’t use at all: pads (didn’t leak at all), bandaids/gauze/tape/neosporin (incisions tiny with one stitch in them and covered in tape until closed), female urinal (you can sit down if you don’t get a tummy tuck)... basically the only things I used: baby wipes/personal wipes, Arnica gel, Tylenol, iron, vitamin c, laxatives, large undies, tank tops for under faja (I had to go buy these because no one told me to bring them), bbl pillow (note it’s super hard to sit on... boppy pillows seem to be better, especially if you get a tummy tuck), my clothes and toiletries
5 days post op pics— can you see a difference??
I think I look the same, and once the swelling in my butt goes down and the fat that doesn’t survive gets reabsorbed I think I’ll have the same body (not skinnier and not a bigger butt). And I’ll be down 10 vacation days and $5500.
I’ll post my full review once I leave the Dominican Republic
I’ll post my full review once I leave the Dominican Republic
Process before surgery!
My surgery is in an hour or so and I’ve stayed at Cecilip overnight since 4pm yesterday. Yesterday I filled out the paperwork and paid and then saw the cardiologist for an ekg, the lung doctor for a breathing test, I saw a psychologist and a psychiatrist, and I had the leg nerve Doppler thing. Also I got blood drawn and saw the endocrinologist. In additional had blood drawn day before yesterday and had my chest X-ray yesterday morning.
The process yesterday was basically I wasn’t allowed to eat/drink after 10. A little after 10 they asked me to shower and put on the gown. (Note there isn’t any shampoo/conditioner so if you want to wash your hair bring your own!) Then they came and put an IV in for fluids which I had all night.
This morning I saw Dr. Medina and she took pics and marked me. She asks you if you have any questions, and I couldn’t think of mine until she left, so I wold recommend preparing them ahead of time. A little later they bring you the blue pill.. which from google I think it is midazolam.
Hope this helps you other dolls to know what to expect! ????????
One note is that the place definitely isn’t immaculately clean. I found little pieces of surgical trash in the room and the walls seem pretty dirty with spots of yellow stuff. Also there was a white cat that came into my room last night and sat under my bed. When I opened the drawers to the room they weren’t clean.. obvious dirt and debris and the aforementioned surgical trash which is a syringe thing (not the needle kind).
The process yesterday was basically I wasn’t allowed to eat/drink after 10. A little after 10 they asked me to shower and put on the gown. (Note there isn’t any shampoo/conditioner so if you want to wash your hair bring your own!) Then they came and put an IV in for fluids which I had all night.
This morning I saw Dr. Medina and she took pics and marked me. She asks you if you have any questions, and I couldn’t think of mine until she left, so I wold recommend preparing them ahead of time. A little later they bring you the blue pill.. which from google I think it is midazolam.
Hope this helps you other dolls to know what to expect! ????????
One note is that the place definitely isn’t immaculately clean. I found little pieces of surgical trash in the room and the walls seem pretty dirty with spots of yellow stuff. Also there was a white cat that came into my room last night and sat under my bed. When I opened the drawers to the room they weren’t clean.. obvious dirt and debris and the aforementioned surgical trash which is a syringe thing (not the needle kind).
Provider Review
Plastic Surgeon
Wilfredo garcia no 5 arroyo hondo., Santo Domingo, Distrito Nacional