48 Year Old Who Always Wanted Great Legs

I’ve never had great legs. No matter how hard I exercised or how much weight I lost, I struggled to wear shorts because my legs have always been so thick. After 40, I noticed the sagging skin on the front of my thighs. I thought it was cellulite but I was wrong. The waviness is my skin losing collagen.
My plastic surgeon explained that Vaser Liposuction would help contour my legs and he could focus on the parts of my legs that I don’t like - outer thighs, knees,and inner thighs. He said that this technique might cause some skin tightening but there is no guarantee. He also said that I was a very subtle case and they would only remove about 1.5L in total.
For the procedure, I was put fully under anesthesia, my surgeon removed exactly the amount he predicted. For the incisions, he did internal stitches with surgical glue at the surface and covered with surgical tape. I had no drainage that others have described because it is less prone to infection and the small incisions leave a less noticeable scar that way.
I basically slept for the next 24 hours. I really wasn’t hungry at all. When I removed the compression garment the following evening to shower, I was noticeably smaller and had hardly any bruises. I believe that I was 5 inches smaller in the widest part of my thighs and for once they were more narrow than my hips. A side effect was that my garment no longer fit. I had to wear biker shorts over them to get any compression. The nurse was fantastic and ordered another garment 2 sizes smaller which is again a tight squeeze. So, my learning is to go ahead and spend the money and buy several sizes to have on hand to allow for changes in your body. Also, buy a small cheap funnel. There is an opening in your stage 1 garment for you to urinate, but a well placed funnel keeps things much more clean.
Day 3, worked from home. Day 4, I was back in the office. I noticed that I started swelling and bruising the back half of the first week, but it hasn’t been too painful. I can now get in and out of the garment like a champ. On day 7, my doctor told me to not wear my garment at night and to peel off the surgical tape.
I’m at day 9 and my bruises are starting to yellow and my incisions look really good. The garments are tight enough to inspire me to eat super clean. As a result, the scale says I am about 8 lbs lighter. In addition, my thigh measurements continue to go down. It doesn’t look like a big change in the pictures yet, but I am hopeful at this point.

So, after a year I can honestly say that I wish I had never done this procedure. Although the shape of my legs improved, the skin is so lumpy and wrinkled that my legs looks 10-15 years older than before the surgery.

These pictures show the before at the top, 9 days after the surgery in the middle, and then 3 months later on the bottom. You decide, but to me, my legs appear to look much older than that of a 49 year old. To be fair, my surgeon did tell me during my initial consult that at my age, my legs were losing collagen and I could have looser skin afterwards. He said that if I had come for treatment 10 years earlier, that my results would likely be better. However, he was hoping that the this type of treatment would offer some skin tightening given the laser component of the lipo technique. Unfortunately, I ended up with the less favorable outcome, but I was warned in advance.

At this point, there is no improvement. I have tried to gain back the weight to see if I could plump back up the skin but it didn’t work. I went back to the office today and I had a consult for non-surgical skin tightening, but that would cost ~ $10k and they admitted that the results aren’t consistently positive. So, I’ve learned to take these warnings seriously and I’m not pursuing the treatment.

I’m so disheartened. I got this procedure to be able to wear shorts with confidence and now all I want to do it hide my legs from the world. I’m out $6.5k and I ruined my thighs even more than they were before. Short of a thigh lift which seems like a gruesome procedure, I’m not sure there is any hope for me to ever have nice legs.

Wish I could recommend this procedure, but for older gals, I’m not a fan.