TT with MR, no lipo - Dallas, TX

after a fairly brief consult, i scheduled my abdominoplasty for november 1st!

the surgery is actually two weeks away, but it seems de rigueur on realself to begin chronicling preoperative concerns and expectations as a means of tracking a full journey, and i think this makes sense. plastic surgery, after all, deserves more reflection than a yelp review of a teeth cleaning. and this site seems like a solid community of supportive individuals who have all devoted a lot of time, money, and emotional investment to the experience of surgical self-improvement.

this feels weird for me. i have not had children, undergone any type of surgery, nor experienced loose skin and stretch marks. at the beginning of undergrad, i was a 5'4,115 lb freshman in college who maxed out at a size 2. over the next seven years, i ballooned with truly impressive rapidity. some time during my first year of grad school, i weighed myself after a shameful night spent binge-eating smuggled snacks in a movie theater- 191 lb, size 14. i finally lost weight in 2012, through the combined efforts of a ketogenic diet and a fitness boot camp. my weight now hangs out in the 140s, vacillating by several pounds depending on how much garbage i've been eating.

i am finally at a normal bmi and happy with my dress size, but weight loss and weight gain ravaged my body in unexpected ways. where once i had a typical asian figure- straight and about as curvy as a loaf of bread, i now have an hourglass figure in the worst way. an hourglass in a dali painting, maybe. although my waist hollowed out to a size 4, my hips remain defiant at a size 8 and my stomach decided to remain persistent in its tendency to mimic a third trimester pregnancy. my ribs are the worst offenders. ferdinand magellan could not circumnavigate the planet that is my rib fat. the protrusion of my terrible upper chest in combination with a small waist has given me a truly weird crease line that i fantasize about ironing out of my skin.

more than anything, it's this increasingly odd distribution of fat that made me start considering plastic surgery. i know what i looked like at 140 lb previously, and it wasn't so horrifyingly lumpy. i am concerned that even with my best efforts to lose another 20 pounds, i will still have this random kevlar vest of rib fat, and awful belly. my bosses, both physicians, swear by a plastic surgeon they've both seen for various procedures- dr. kent hughes. seeing that he has done good work, i decided to just test the waters with a consultation.

i actually visited dr. hughes for a lipo consult. i thought it would be as simple as vaccuuming away my rib fat disaster, and taking care of the belly along with it. dr. hughes was friendly, warm, and very calming- he reassured me that i'd just need some body sculpting to reach my full potential. however, upon viewing the mess that is my torso, he decided abdominoplasty would be the ideal solution- defatting all the way up to beneath my breasts.

it's more than a little shameful to consider that i'm having a tummy tuck. i feel like this procedure should be reserved for women who have bravely born children, sacrificing their abdominal muscles and elastic skin to bring life to the world. whereas i have been sitting around eating taco bell, just bringing more adipose tissue to the world. there's also another layer of shame in realizing that it would take one of the most invasive procedures offered by my surgeon to bring my body into viewable condition.

but i'm excited. i am not afraid of the pain and the long recovery period- my work and my boyfriend form an excellent support system and i have confidence in dr. hughes' expertise. i'm not certain this is the wisest fiscal decision i could make in light of my omnipresent grad school loans (which are far more important to pay off but simultaneously the least satisfying thing to funnel my income towards). i am hoping for good results and minimal complications. i don't expect to have a perfect torso, and to that end i am not contemplating photos of models. i just want to be able to wear a tight dress without having to swathe myself in so many pairs of spanx i need the jaws of life to cut myself out of them by the end of night. i just want to feel like i can get naked without hoping that my partner develops glaucoma soon. and most importantly, i just want to be able to wear a bikini before i'm medicare-eligible.

so i have no idea why i'm posting a photo of my bare torso, which i typically keep under wraps at all times and try never to look at. i've told pretty much all my close friends that i'm undergoing this procedure, so if any of them have traced me to this website, i'm sorry y'all have to see my weirdly distributed fat.

this is what i'm working with pre-abdominoplasty. my rib fat is uneven. and i assume the crease beneath it exists because i'm constantly slouching with the world's worst posture, which will make the post-op hunching over pretty easy.

man i can't wait to have a belly button that doesn't look like it's perpetually depressed about life.

i saw my plastic surgeon again yesterday for a more in-depth discussion about the surgery, and left feeling very confident. i am adding a pain pump, which is stupidly expensive but will keep me feeling good enough to go to work without pain meds.

oh, that's another thing. i don't plan to be off more than a couple of days. i could take a full week, but i'm panicky about leaving the office for so long. it may be best to work from home, but i'll figure it out as i recover. i'm pretty sure 90% of my job is answering emails, 5% ignoring sales calls, and 5% making sure my employees don't start catfighting in the hallways, so it's not a physically demanding profession. i don't intend to compromise my recovery, but i am also not down to lie around for two weeks crying. i guess it all comes down to how i feel post-op.

dr. hughes has a great pedigree; i have no doubts about his skill level and feel confident that my belly button won't end up off-center. i did confirm that scar revisions and dog-ear removals are done at no cost if such corrections are needed. i will have one drain, and it's likely i'll need to keep it in for a week.

this is very rambling, i'm just trying to write down my thoughts with no real organizational flow to this. it feels very unreal, as if this is something i'm only pretending to do. the idea of waking up in about a week without having to stuff my body into a pair of spanx is bizarre and almost inconceivable.

i keep vacillating between upswings of joy and excitement, then sobering moments of dread. i think it's natural human instinct to avoid pain and damage, so the actualization of voluntary self-mutilation is an inevitable fear.

i feel oddly sentimental about my body. even though i'm at the point where i'd pay thousands to be rid of these humiliating pockets of fat, i feel vaguely like i'm betraying my body and skin to the cold precision of a surgeon's knife. like i'm paying several thousand dollars for the assassination of something that has been part of me for a very long time. i get that this is a really weird line of thought, but i am nothing if not routinely and inconveniently sentimental.

i think my boyfriend is super apprehensive of the recovery process and already seems a bit inconvenienced by my discussion of it. i think it would help calm my nerves if he were more cheerful, but i know i'm asking a lot of him and thoughtlessly showing him gory wound vac photos. definitely not helping the cause. i'm worried that if i don't keep up a dialogue about the risks and pitfalls in the post-op stage, he'll get the feeling that he's taking me home after a wisdom tooth extraction or something similarly non-invasive. i'm trying to explain that depression may set in during the recovery period, since i'll probably be miserable from perpetually hunching over and sleeping sitting up like the elephant man. he is completely bewildered.