Excellent Experience and All Around Care

Dr. Gruber’s office provided excellent care from start to finish. I started down the rabbit hole of researching Lipedema after having a visit with my mom, who I hadn’t seen in a while, and seeing how much her legs had deteriorated. My mom is not fat but her mobility is now severely affected by her Lipedema and her legs are so heavy that when she needs to, for example, get out of a car, she uses her arms to pull her legs up and out onto the ground, before she stands up. After a ton of research, I took her to see a vascular surgeon in Missouri that I thought would be able to deal with such a complicated case as hers (she is 82, recently had a knee replacement, and has lots of varicose and spider veins) as well give me a consult on my Lipedema. This doctor feels strongly that he needs to physically meet with each patient before offering a treatment plan and I do respect that, especially for the complicated patients he sees. I don’t yet have my mom’s dire mobility issues but have a crazy disproportionate thigh size, wearing size four tops and size 14 bottoms (because of my thighs). He was a nice guy and very knowledgeable (if my mom decides to go through with surgery, I’d feel comfortable to bring her back to him), but I just didn’t connect with him, didn’t really like the esthetics of his work (but to be fair many of his patients have truly deformed legs to begin with and his foremost goal is to give medical relief from the lipadema, not esthetics) and didn’t feel like he took the time to listen to me and what I was looking for. He also marked up my legs and said if I wanted to fix everything, I’d need to have 3 different surgeries with him.

After that consult with him, I then proceeded to do tons more research online to find doctors that do leg liposuction, because there are only a handful of them. There were two doctors in California that both looked really good but they do it under general anesthesia (I think so they can just remove massive amounts of fat, which some people may prefer) and I just don’t think there is any way a surgeon can effectively do this procedure without you awake, constantly repositioning your legs and also standing up to check your legs so that they can make revisions and make sure everything is symmetrical right during the surgery. Those guys also both had literally wrap sheets of citations from the CA medical boards (always check the license of every doctor you use with their medical board)!

I then found another Lipadema specialist in Tampa and he had great before and after pictures and no board problems but I realized that he is just an internal medicine doctor and that’s why he only does liposuction and can’t offer a thigh lift or other procedures himself, because he’s not actually a surgeon. Also, when I contacted his office they just had me email in some pictures and returned them to me with markups and you don’t actually interact with him until you meet him the morning of the procedure. They told me that they could fix everything in two surgeries (thighs 360 in one and knees/calves and ankles in another). I didn’t feel comfortable with the money factory/salesy feel of my interactions with them and also I thought his pricing was crazy high. His work looked beautiful but I am personally just not comfortable to commit to tens of thousands of dollars of treatment without even hearing the doctor’s voice or knowing that he was going to do what I was actually looking for.

Luckily, I found Dr. Gruber and I then called her office. After doing an intake form and sending in pictures, they set me up with a phone consult. We ended up speaking for almost an hour and she explained every aspect of surgery options. I explained to her that I was concerned because I hadn’t seen pictures really from any doctors where a patient had thighs so disproportionate both from their upper body but also even from their lower legs. She then showed me pictures from the case that was part of her TLC TV show, of a lady with much more disproportionate thighs than me. After I saw the way she treatment planned and fixed her case, I knew she could do mine. I also loved that she really questioned me to find out what I was most looking to gain from the surgery and then gave me options from there, including the most minimally invasive option that I ended up choosing. I explained that I was mostly looking to get rid of the huge ridge between my hip and thigh so that my clothes will lay much more smoothly and my body will be better proportioned. She told me that my calves and ankles probably didn’t need to be done right now and they also have a much longer swelling and recovery than liposuction higher on the legs. She also explained that since my skin was already loose on my inner thighs, they would most likely need a lift if we liposuctioned them. Since really it’s my large outer thigh that is so noticeable in clothes, she thought I could get 90% of the relief and esthetic I was looking for by just reducing the extreme disproportion of the outer thigh and butt and then making the legs look much more contoured buy doing the knees 360, without needing to touch the inner thighs, calves or ankles. It meant a lot to me that she listened to me and tried to give me a treatment plan to be the most helpful, in the most straightforward, least invasive, and cost effective way.

It is very clear to me that Dr. Gruber truly wants what is best for her patients. She didn’t in any way try to guide me to do more things or spend more money and in fact it was quite the opposite. Her internal ethics lead her to be very upfront with patients about what they should expect and both the up and downsides of various procedures. She could have sold me on Renuvion (skin tightening) or told me that I absolutely needed to have multiple surgeries (other doctors did both) but instead found a way to get me what was most important to me, while being very honest about the complications and cost/benefits of doing each thing.

I’m also slightly more complicated than the average patient because I only have one kidney and I’ve also just had a few really bad (like malpractice bad…lol) medical experiences in my life. I’m not the kind to take extra medications or jump into elective procedures because of these bad experiences and Dr. Gruber just made me feel super at ease.

I’ve loaded the before and after pictures and I honestly think the ones in clothes and the one where I’m sitting down best show the scope of the change she made for me. Also, as far pain, I don’t want to jinx anything but I don’t know what people are worried about, I feel like this was a joke compared to having my kids (and yes I had epidurals…lol) and other surgeries I’ve had to have. The anesthesia shots and liposuction itself were less painful than getting my bikini waxed! :) Also, if I did feel any pain, I just told them and they stopped immediately and just added a little more anesthesia. I’m definitely bruised and swollen and yes I’m taking the pain meds but I don’t feel any worse than if I took a spill skiing or after an intense workout.

I’m happy to answer questions if anyone wants to reach out and I’d like to say thank you again to Dr. Gruber and her lovely staff for their amazing work. People might belittle plastic surgery as superficial but I feel like they have fixed a deformity in my body that is not only unsightly but added pain and limitations in my life, just as important as a doctor fixing a cleft palate or a lazy eye, and I’m very hopeful this surgery will reduce the leg pain, heaviness and swelling that I’ve had for so long. I’m very grateful to them!!