38 Year Old Male Tummy Tuck and Lipo of Flanks - Round Rock, TX

I was in the military when I was young, and used to be in great shape. Over the 15 years that followed, I really let things slide. At my heaviest, I weighed nearly 300lbs. A couple of years ago, I took control and got my weight down to 210 through diet and exercise. I looked decent, but it became apparent that I would not be able to get rid of my love handles and spare tire because so much of it was just skin.

I just went in on 7/15 and had the surgery done. It went very smoothly. I don't have a before picture handy, but I'll dig one up and update this post later on. I am totally stoked with how things look even one day after surgery when I'm swollen like crazy. Can't wait to see the final outcome.

Its funny how this is playing out exactly like the rhinoplasty I had done in 97. I spent the first week on the couch wondering just what the hell I had done to myself, and vowing never to do plastic surgery again. I went through that stage last week. Part of it I think is a weird denial thing because you are literally missing a significant part of your body. Its like your reptilian brain perceives it as a catastrophe and it takes a while for your higher self to say no this is actually really badass.

This is the same angle from the day before and the day after the surgery. Its a little tough to appreciate how much skin and flab is in the lower belly in this particular before shot.

In second picture, what appears to be remaining love handles and belly fat is primarily swelling, which apparently takes weeks to go down. PS removed 5 lbs from the lower belly yet I weighed 17 lbs more in the second picture. 23lbs is almost 3 gallons of water. Yow.

Also I got one of the drains out today, but the other one is still outputting 60ml. Pulling the drain out felt really strange. Turns out there's a couple feet of perforated tubing inside the abdomen, and when they pull it out you can feel it snaking its way all over the place. Didn't hurt much, was just weird.

Back at work now. The binder fits under my clothes well enough that you can't even tell. No pain at all anymore. If it wasn't for my PS telling me not to, I'd probably at least be back in the gym doing cardio.

I've been losing all of that water like crazy, something like a pound a day. When I went in for surgery I weighed 220. The day after surgery I weighed 237. 2 weeks later I weigh 212. Its getting to where people are commenting that it seems like I've lost weight. I'm going to need to get a smaller binder too.

The weeping from the incision is slowing way down too. I still have to keep gauze on it, but the volume is dropping every day. The one complication so far is a small hole that opened up in my incision. Its about 1/2" long and probably like 1/4" deep. I'm having to pack it with wet gauze. It doesn't hurt at all, its just creepy. I get the impression that this is something that happens routinely and isn't a big deal.

Reflecting back on my expectations of the recovery, I find its much less about pain and misery and much more about tedious bullshit like doing elaborate wound care rituals 3 times a day.

Went to the Dr yesterday and he seemed genuinely surprised at how much better my incision looked after a week of my little wound healing protocol. Basically I went out and read all of the studies that say XYZ helps wound healing and threw all of them at the problem:

Bromelain 500mg daily
Arginine+Ornithine 2000mg daily
Sildenafil 50mg daily
Low carb Whey Protein 150g daily (shake at every meal)
Fish Oil Concentrate 2000mg (meaning 2000mg of EPA+DHA, not just the fish oil)
B-complex (can't remember the dosage)
No NSAIDS (no naproxen, no aspirin, no ibuprofen, nothing)

Also stopped using all disinfectants on the wound (I was using Hibiclens). Just changed over to straight non-antibacterial soap. Can't tell you which of these (if any) helped, but like I said the Dr seemed impressed at how much better the wound looked.

Forgot to update this in a while. At about the 6 week mark the hole healed up, and Dr. cleared me for full activity. I'm doing deadlifts, bench press, power cleans, all of it no problem. Haven't had any issues other that swelling.

I'm very pleased with the overall experience and result. Those first few weeks of recovery weren't much fun, but I'm suprised at how quickly I was able to get back to full workouts.