25yo | Vaser Liposuction on Inner & Outer Thighs | Over-sharing All the Way ;) - Sydney, AU

I am 25 years old and have decided to get vaser liposuction on my inner and outer thighs. I intend to do a candid and honest review of this experience, partly for my own reflective process but also because I found similar posts to be really useful and far more practical than the glossy hand outs from the clinic.

I am naturally a size 6-8 on my top & 10-12 on my bottom (mostly on account of the junk in my trunk which I am happily keeping) and I am also aware that I am by no means overweight. I am considering this a 'photoshopping experience' to smooth the slight extra curve around my upper thighs, particularly noticeable when i'm standing on an angle. I have a host of reasons that I won't go in to, but for the most part my thighs have always been my 'thing' and I have no control over their shape. They do not respond to diet or exercise like the rest of my body does and this makes my legs look even bigger in comparison when I do work out & eat well. Basically this is the only opportunity I will have to do this and the pro's list is seriously outweighing the con's.

Dr Joseph Ajaka at the Cosmos Clinic Double Bay will be my doctor and so far I have had very limited contact with him. During my first consultation in April I was welcomed by one of his nurses, Laura, who was very warm and gentle. She answered all of my questions and had a calm, honest and happy presence about her which was really appealing. My meeting with Dr. Ajaka however was the opposite. He seemed rushed and distracted, like he was reciting a monologue and just wanted me to sign some papers and leave. To be fair he was pretty realistic about what results to expect and did answer my questions, however he came across as very impersonal and to be honest a little bored. This interaction was conflicting - I am trying to be rational about the fact that I would rather he be a good doctor than a good talker, but I am putting a lot of trust in this person and I think it's important to feel like he is actually listening to me. That meeting put me off the procedure for several months while I thought everything over again, but I have decided to continue with the procedure and Dr Ajaka. I have also decided not to feel like I need to rush my consultations or questions for his sake. I am paying a lot of money for a service and it is in everyone's interest that we communicate clearly to achieve the best possible result.

My procedure will be on the 10th of September and i'm feeling well researched about what to expect from the experience (thanks largely to this site!) Last week I had my pre-operative appointment where I spoke a nurse about the logistics of the day and questioned her intensely regarding before & after care. I have a friend who is coming to pick me up after the appointment but I intend to look after myself more or less for the recovery process. I have not told many people about this procedure and I have no intention of doing so, however my housemate is aware of what I am doing so I am relying on her a bit should anything go drastically wrong during the nights immediately after.

I have been taking arnica tablets, eating well, exercising moderately & I quit smoking about a month ago. I have a small mountain of old towels & garbage bags to protect my bed & sheets, now I am just preparing myself to look/feel/smell absolutely disgusting for several days.

I find myself in a strange rotation of thoughts when I look at my body now. I try to appreciate what is there before it goes forever, then I try to picture what it will look like when it's done so I can justify the operation. But then I have to remind myself that there is a very good chance it won't look exactly like I want it to, which leads me back into appreciating what I have & wondering if i'm making a mistake.

My new motto is prepare for everything and expect nothing. This is a gamble and I know that, but I think i'm as ready as i'm ever going to be and this is definitely the time to do it.

For some reason the 'before' pictures did not load with the last post so (hopefully) here they are.

I'm struggling more than I should with this technology. I'll get better, I promise.

Today's the day!
I'm lying in the clinic with plenty of time to kill. I arrived early due to an allergic reaction from the Lorazepam that I took last night - itchy welts all over my back and neck, plus 2 puffy eyes. No one at the clinic has ever seen someone react like this so they have me on a steroid to try and calm the reaction which has so far been superficial. They gave me the option to push it out to tomorrow but I feel fine, I just look gross, and I'd rather push on if it's safe to do so.

On top of this I was sick last week with a chest infection made worse by my asthma. I spent the whole week resting and packing myself full of Vitamin C/olive leaf extract/echinacea/antibiotics. There was (is?) a chance the procedure won't go ahead as they don't want to risk compromising my airways if I'm already vulnerable.
On the plus side I feel great. All that rest, water and vitamin C has perked my body right up!

Dr Ajaka is much warmer today and has been very helpful, understanding and kind. He is still brusque, but in the way of those people who are thinking 100 things a minute. He inserted my cannula effortlessly and that alone has been a huge comfort. I've had them before and ended up covered in blood, but this was a 10/10 execution and now I'm knee deep in 'this guy knows what he's doing' headspace.

From the procedure room that I'm in I can hear them repeatedly coaxing the woman currently in theatre to "roll over so we can do your tummy".
It sounds painful. For the nurses.
I already feel sorry for them having to deal with my drugged-up-and-dumb-as-shit body that I have no doubt will be just as limp and uncomplying as poor Susan in there.
I'm not nervous or overly excited yet, mostly curious as I have never had any kind of surgery before and I don't know anyone who has had liposuction. I'm fascinated by everything that is happening around me; the suction noise coming from the theatre, the crackling of some mysterious cosmetic procedure next door, eavesdropping on conversations regarding patient aftercare. It's a world I haven't seen before and I love how casual it seems for these people who do this every day.

I am however feeling a bit odd about a comment on my 'before' pics. I assume it was written with good intentions but it has upset me a little and I've seen similar comments on other blogs that are worded just as unhelpfully. I have never claimed that my body or my thighs are fat. I have a wonderful relationship with my body and am incredibly grateful for what I have - both how it looks and how it functions. I am in no way mentally ill and I believe I see my body as accurately as most people see their own bodies.
This procedure, for me, is on the same scale as whitening my teeth, getting a tattoo or having laser hair removal. I already love what's there, I am simply taking advantage of modern technology to tweak myself. The 'photoshopping' experience as I previously mentioned.
I do understand that for many people this is a big deal, a potentially life changing experience and something that has weighed on them for a long time. I do not consider myself to be one of those people and I know that I would be perfectly happy staying as I am. But I have chosen to do this to my own body for my own reasons, no one else's thighs should affect that.

My procedure won't start until the early afternoon. Until then I have my magazines and my eavesdropping to entertain me :)

So I just had liposuction. Not long after my last post a man who I hadn't met before, Dr Daiya Kishida, came in and marked me up like a topographic map. He was very kind, asked lots of questions and explained everything he was doing as he did it. I showed him before & after pictures from the Cosmos Clinic site that were similar to my body type & had the results I was looking for. We then discussed the exact shape I wanted, if we should continue the line of the 'dip' that happens just below my hip, or if I wanted a slight curve left for a more feminine line. I decided my waist to hip ratio was all the feminine lines I needed and so we decided to try and keep the hips as the widest point for a more 'athletic' look (or as I like to call it 'the every model on my pinterest board' look). I also ducked in to the bathroom just before the procedure & stamped the toilet seat with the marker from my thighs. Should have thought that through before I sat down but no-one seemed to care when I told them.

Due to the reaction from the Lorazepam the night before they decided not to sedate me for the procedure incase I reacted badly to that too, so I just had gas and was pretty lucid for the whole thing. I'll try to re-tell it as accurately as possible for those of you just as curious as I was but feel free to tap out for this next bit if you're happier not knowing the details.
They started by getting me on the gas and tried to get me breathing normally, I was aware of a tiny prick for what I assume was the local anaesthetic but it didn't hurt at all. The next step involved the 'vasering' part where they insert a rod that emits some sort of ultrasound to soften the fat. This bit was super weird - I could sort of feel the rod pushing through the fat cells. It wasn't a painful feeling, but I could definitely feel the hesitation of it as it pushed up against solid bits, and then those bits giving way as it mushed everything up. This was probably the 'worst' part of the procedure in that I was quite aware of the sensation and occasionally I could start to feel things, but the second I would say "ouch" (more as an alert that I could feel it as opposed to actual pain) they would stop & give me some more pain relief. It wasn't bad, I think I was curious enough to justify any slight pain and I doubt it would feel anything like that if i'd been under sedation like the other patients were.
The next part was the suction and I hardly felt any of this except a vague sensation of where on my body they were working. I remember watching the little clusters of orange fat cartwheeling up the tube and into the collection cup. It was so interesting and fascinatingly gross, occasionally I would look down as they were pumping, unable to feel a thing and trying to reconcile how violent this procedure looked in videos with how painless this part felt. I kept telling them how gross it was and they kept telling me to stop talking and to breathe the gas. This happened far more often than it should have.
For each section (right front inner thing, left front inner thigh etc) they started the process from scratch, so it was a constant rotation of local>vaser>suction>compare. I had assumed they might vaser everything, then suction everything, the way you would if you had some craft project that required several repeated actions, but each little section got special attention.
After this they stood me up very slowly and had a look at how the fat was sitting, they drew new marks on me and then lay me back down to adjust any irregularities. They did this twice I think which was reassuring, I remember there were at least 3 doctors having a look & discussing what, if anything, needed to be tweaked. The whole thing took around 2 hours I think, but the time sort of floated by, like dozing in the morning where you know time is passing but you don't care.
To be completely honest there were a couple of moments during the vaser part where it did hurt. I think it was my right inner thigh and i'm not sure why I felt that part and not others. It wasn't unbearable though, in fact I think the most uncomfortable thing was that I couldn't see what was happening and was very aware that there was a foreign object flailing around inside me that I had no control over. When I told them it actually hurt though, as opposed to my casual complaints of 'I can feel that' they were pretty quick to get me on some higher dose painkillers which worked very quickly. I also found if I closed my eyes and relaxed it wasn't so bad, there was something about seeing what the doctor was doing & my brain anticipating pain that heightened my senses. When I closed my eyes & just enjoyed the gas I actually had a marvellous time. I was disappointed when it finished!

GROSS BIT OVER NOW :D

So about 5 minutes into this whole thing I realised that it was Dr Kishida who was working on me, not Dr Ajaka. I thought it was weird that no one had mentioned that the doctor I had been liaising with up until this point would not actually be performing the procedure, but I didn't mind so much. Partly because of the gas I assume, but also because Dr Kishida had a very warm air about him and had specified before I started on the gas that he had a background in anaesthetics - something everyone was concerned about with my dodgy asthmatic, chest infected, allergy prone airways.
I do remember Dr Ajaka mentioning in our first meeting back in April that another doctor would be with him, but I assumed he would be doing most of the procedure with another doctor assisting. Instead Dr Ajaka took more of a supervisor roll, I remember him coming in to the room a lot, discussing how it was going with Dr Kishida and checking that I was OK. He was also one of the 3 doctors assessing how it all looked when they stood me up, so he was quite involved, I just don't remember him ever actually touching me.

When it was done one of the nurses took my now saline-drenched underwear off and put my compression garment on while I was still lying down. Genius idea. Not just because I was a level 10 space cadet after all that gas, but because it was a hell of a lot easier to get on than during my practice pre-op run when I was standing up. Also there was 1.1 litres less of me so that probably helped too. I've made a mental note to do all future undressing of the garment while lying down in the bath - easy to clean up & nowhere to fall over if I black out.

Because I wasn't sedated I felt really normal within about 10 minutes. I could walk around fine (the local was still working I think?) and I ended up calling my friend to come get me earlier because I was pretty bored just sitting up eating muesli bars & listening to Susan* snoring next to me. I had some panadine forte before I left and I wasn't dizzy or anything, just slow moving and a bit sore. It just felt like I'd done 100 squats...but to be honest i've never actually done 100 squats so that description is purely speculative. We booked in my post op massages for each saturday starting tomorrow so I don't miss any work and I headed home with my friend on a plastic drop sheet & 2 towels.

I'll discuss the process that is navigating my house & recovery later, at this point I just want to say how happy I am with the surgery. I was so impressed with how they looked after me and how professional, kind and funny all the staff were. From the allergic reaction and all the way through the procedure I felt totally safe and listened to which were my main concerns when trusting strangers with my body. The results look amazing, when I came out of theatre I went into the bathroom to have a look in the full length mirror & I was gobsmacked by how closely it resembled what I had always hoped my legs would look like. The nurse reminded me that they had already started to swell which concerned me a little bit, what I was looking at was exactly what I had asked for so it occurred to me that they may have taken too much. I don't think that's the case though, and they have since swollen even more so I'm pretty sure what I first saw was not far off how they are going to look. I was also warned by many people who had their thighs done that they hardly noticed a difference even after the swelling had gone down so that was also something I had in the back of my mind.

Overall I am so happy with every aspect of this process and am glad that I trusted my body was OK to go ahead with the procedure despite my cough and allergy. I really appreciated that Dr Ajaka took my 'gut feeling' seriously and could balance his medical knowledge with a patient's intuition, something he said was important to him.

I'm really excited to see what the next few weeks bring!

*obviously not her real name.

So the healing process is not quite what I thought it would be. I had expected to be sore and slow moving, but I hadn't anticipated feeling so dizzy and nauseous all the time which has made caring for myself even harder than it needed to be. The cocktail of drugs that the clinic gives you can make you feel sick enough (it's one of the reasons they include anti-nausea tablets in your prescription party bag) but i'm taking all of these on top of the antibiotics i'd already started for my chest infection AND antihistamines for my still-lingering allergic reaction. The result is not pretty.
My unwavering self sufficiency has had to suck it up & i'm relying on my friend and housemates far more than I had planned to.

When I got home from the clinic I headed straight for bed and relaxed with my best friend and a movie. The first real challenge was getting to the bathroom, the second was working out how the hell to pee without getting it all over the pressure garment, the third was trying to mop up the crime scene that had leaked from my incisions without bending over so much that I bled even more. The first time this all went down I handled it pretty well on my own. The next time I had hardly got my underwear back on before I realised there was a very good chance I was going to pass out and had to call my friend for help. He very kindly mopped up the blood from all over the tiles while I lay down in bed and tried to work out how to never ever pee again.
I put bathroom visits in the 'too hard' basket and stupidly started drinking less water than I should have, which leads to swelling, which causes pain, which meant waking up every few hours alone in bed unable to roll over and feeling sicker and sicker for taking all my panadine forte on an empty stomach. Do not recommend.
I have learned from this though and now that i'm not bleeding all over the place (and have mastered the toilet technique) i'm drinking close to 3 litres of water a day - my skin looks fabulous!

The last few days I have mostly been trying to move around without overdoing it. I am eating little bits as often as I can to keep something in my stomach for all the meds, but i've learned not to go too hard on one meal because apparently the energy/blood required to digest a full stomach does not leave enough blood in my system to remain conscious. Again, i'm learning.

The first shower was not the ordeal I had expected it to be either. I was warned repeatedly that this is the bit where everyone passes out and I had prepared accordingly; lie down in the bath, have phone at hand for emergency, have cool damp hand towel ready for placing on forehead etc, but it was fine. I took it super slow and tried to keep my breathing normal, shuffling the garment off as evenly as possible so that there wasn't too much gathering in one place. I took some photos and maintained a healthy balance of 'this is amazing I can really see the difference' and 'why is there a dent there? why is there a MASSIVE DENT right here when I sit down??!!'. I'm very pleased so far and have to keep reminding myself that this isn't even my final form and I just need to give it time to heal - odd lumps and dips are normal i'm told.
I slipped into my second garment (read; struggled gently), very grateful that I thought to get a spare before I left the clinic, and felt victorious at successfully navigating the first shower on my own.

The clinic has called me twice to see how I am doing and I went in yesterday for my 'ultrasound massage'. I couldn't think of anything worse than someone massaging my legs at this point but all she did was lube me up and glide an ultrasound gently over the areas - this somehow encourages the cells to start healing? Science.
She also showed me how to 'warm up' my lymph nodes & slowly run my hands up the damaged areas towards my groin to encourage drainage and healing. It hurts like hell when someone else does it to me gently, but i've found I can put a lot more pressure on if I do it to myself.
I had been too scared to touch my raw looking legs much and hadn't really taken much notice of the large swollen numb patches. I assumed those bits were due to some sort of numbing chemical that hadn't fully left my body yet, turns out when they mush all the fat up they also detach all the nerves from the skin and your body has to grow them back. Marvellous. I now feel even guiltier about what i'm putting my body through and have developed a love-hate relationship with this garment, I'm very aware of how much it's helping my body grow back together in the right way.

I've started venturing out of the house bit by bit, careful not to stray too far from a stable place to sit down, and learning what my triggers are for dizziness, nausea, pain etc. I think i'll need to call in sick for Monday as I don't think i'm fully capable of getting myself to work, let alone showing clients around and pretending i'm OK. The more uncomfortable I look the more questions people ask and i'm trying to avoid that.

Despite the inconvenience of being sick I am still very glad that I did the procedure. I'm employing the mind over matter technique constantly and reminding myself that being uncomfortable can be a very good thing. Bruises mean healing and if it's stinging or itchy at least I can feel the skin, which implies that the nerves are reconnecting. It's all just a matter of time.

This has been an odd week. I am very happy to say that I am feeling over 9000 times better today than I was immediately post-op, but I'd also like to clarify for the rest of this post that I am sure my recovery is in no way typical. I had been very sick before the operation so my body was already running low on the energy I needed to heal and I had an allergic reaction to something I was prescribed so my body was fighting that at the same time. As of Monday last week I was on a butt load of drugs including 2 kinds of antibiotics, panadeine forte, anti-inflammatories, panadol, antihistamines, anti-nausea medication and Gavascon for heartburn (taking a pill every 2 hours does not a happy stomach make). Those last 3 were only on the list to treat the symptoms of the others.

I had considered not reporting this next bit as I was concerned that it would put people off and I want to make it very clear that I haven't heard of anyone else experiencing this. But I had promised myself I would be honest about the entire experience, even when it gets gross or scary (you will see both during this post).

After having a weekend of feeling a bit fragile and dizzy I decided to cut myself some slack and call in sick for Monday, I thought myself fully capable of going to work but I wanted to rest while I could. Around 5:30am that morning I woke up with severe heartburn so painful that it sent my body into shock. Like full on, my body is seriously not coping, wave after wave of "do I throw up or pass out first?" kind of shock. I held it together pretty damn well for 20 minutes before I realised things were only getting worse and called my housemates for help. They came in to find me as white as my sheets, delirious and flailing about in a pool of cold sweat. After spending too long attempting to get advice from a surprisingly useless woman on the 24-hour medical assistance hotline we called 000. By the time the ambulance arrived it had been 40 minutes since the ordeal began (for those of you playing at home that's a full 3hrs in 'I think i'm going to die' time) and the waves of shock were finally slowing down. The paramedic stayed with me until my heart-rate climbed back up but I declined going to hospital, just starting to feel even slightly better was the most amazing relief and I was just glad it was going to be over soon.

I now know that this was all a reaction to having way too much medication in my system as opposed to the actual procedure, not to mention how prone my body already was to going into shutdown mode or breaking out in hives as a coping technique. By 10am I was more or less fine, save for an ominous dull burning in my chest, and when I called the clinic they were very quick to respond. The receptionist had a doctor call me back immediately and we talked through what had happened. He took me off one of the antibiotics (I only had one day left on that batch) and all of the pain medication including the anti-inflammatories. I bought Gavascon for any future heartburn and chose the bright pink coloured bottle for show. It tastes like a toothpaste syrup but I have never loved anything more in my life, I carried it with me everywhere this week and used it after every pill/meal for the next 3 days. I was quite sore without any pain medication and so I put myself back on the anti-inflammatories after I had finished my other course of antibiotics. Once they started working the rest of the week was a breeze.

If I remove this event from my recovery timeline everything else has been pretty standard and pain is fleeting and totally tolerable. The first few days back at work I was obviously a bit stiff, but I just took my time getting in and out of chairs and avoided bending down or lifting anything heavy.
To be honest my biggest problem, from a day-to-day point of view, was trying to walk like I wasn't constipated. This was tricky for several reasons.
The first being that, let's be honest, I was a little constipated (you can thank the panadeine forte) although I doubt this had too much affect on my gait. The second was the deep suspicion I held towards my swollen inner thighs that were supposedly touching. The area is still numb and I can only describe the sensation as being similar to waking up with a dead arm - you are aware of the tingling weight of your own body and your brain knows that there is tissue there that should feel things, but all of your skin senses are muted. I do not like this, not one bit. The third and largest influence was that the hole in this garment sits far too far towards the back for my liking. Because I had my inner thighs done I have to wear the leggings as high as possible and the pee hole resists all attempts for me to rotate it forward. As if my vagina wasn't angry enough from the double dose of antibiotics I threw at it, now it also has to deal with intimate elastic grazing at every step.

As for the progress of my actual legs i'm in good spirits. I consider myself very lucky to have seen them very briefly (in a garment) before the swelling really set in so I think I have a good idea of what lies underneath. They seem to have peaked in terms of swelling exactly a week after the procedure and now they are just hanging out being puffy together, i'm told it will start to get better in the next few days.
The bruising looks bad but doesn't feel anything like a normal bruise, at least not on my inner thighs - the part showing purple wasn't even an area they treated! As far as I know they didn't touch that area and the lack of skin numbness confirms this, however i've tried giving the bruises a mighty poke and they don't hurt either. Lord knows what they think they're healing down there, but it is satisfying to have something that looks conspicuously painful for when I get nerve twangs firing in the back of my leg. This started a couple of days ago (again, it's all healing I tell myself) and at least I have photos of SOMETHING to show my friends so they know how much sympathy to express. The part that actually hurts is disappointingly normal looking.

I'm going to end this in much the way that I usually do - by reminding you and myself that yes, things got weird and super uncomfortable, but i'm heading in the right direction. Every day my legs are looking better or feeling stronger and I'm so excited for this process. Even the awful bits.

This has been an exciting week. The swelling has really started to recede offering glimpses of what lies underneath, the bruising is fading which is a satisfying way of knowing my body is healing, I tried on a pair of tights that I bought years ago and never wore because they weren't very flattering at the time and then I spent the day strutting said tights through the eastern suburbs feeling absolutely fabulous. Confidence +10

I also had the opportunity to have coffee and a debrief with another patient who had been to the same clinic. I've been pretty open about the whole process, talking my friend's ears off about all these new sensations/emotional experiences but it was really nice to be able to speak openly with someone who 'got it'. You can cut out the 10 minutes of 'justifying my decision' bullshit and get straight to the "how weird is it when [insert gross side effect here] happens?".
It was surprisingly cathartic and I strongly recommend it if you have the chance.

On the topic of weird side effects, be prepared to have lumpy bits all up inside ya. I thought it could be avoided if you did the massage every day but it just seems to be part of the process. I only noticed it at 10 days post and I totally lost my shit when I felt it, thinking it was because of something i'd done wrong. I can't feel it through the garment though so I don't know if it started hardening earlier and the massage that the physio does is very different to how I was first shown.
She gets right in there like she's working knots out, kneading particular areas that hurt at the time but feel magnificent afterwards. I copped some flack during my first session for not using the arnica cream on my bruises, I hadn't bothered because I figured no-one was going to see my legs anyway and to be honest I was kind of proud of them, but apparently bruising = bad. Like swelling it is generally a sign that your body is sad in that spot and anything you can do to make it heal faster/hurt less is going to be beneficial to the healing process.

As for the rest of me i've been off any medications all week and everything seems to be settling down again. There is still a tightness around the inner thighs when I stand up/sit down but once i'm up I can walk around like a perfectly normal human being. There are still areas that hurt when I touch them, in fact pretty much everything hurts when I touch it, but if I DON'T touch it i'm fine :D
I'm employing my mum's attitude to medical treatment - if it hurts stop poking it and it won't.

I know there's still a fair way to go, and lord knows i've still got bruises and bumps and suspicious lumpy bits, but I think the biggest surprise is how much this has changed my confidence. I never expected to be this happy with my results, and certainly not so soon.
I consider myself to be a reasonably confident person who has a very healthy relationship with their body, but I feel like I've levelled up. My body and I are good friends, I treat her pretty well and occasionally we have little affirming sessions where I tell her how grateful I am that she's mine. It took me a long time to feel this comfortable with myself and I had been worried that pursuing something as drastic as liposuction might trigger an avalanche of body issues, but so far it hasn't. In fact my body appreciation pendulum has swung far in the other direction and I am feeling a joy that I hadn't allowed myself to anticipate lest I be disappointed with the outcome. I had hoped at best i'd look more in proportion, I never let myself expect to be HAPPIER because of this - but I have to say that in all honesty, right now, I most definitely am.

I'm staying realistic, I know that this is the first-love head over heals kind of rush that comes with exciting new things, but i'm enjoying it and I intend to make an effort to celebrate this body even more and show it off as much as I can. After all, I paid good money for it.

Apologies for the absenteeism, however I consider it to be a very good thing how easily time flies and life goes back to normal. The biggest reason for not writing anything was that there really wasn't much to report, after the initial awe and confusion life went right on with no consideration of how sweaty I might feel under all that viscose. It has been almost 8 weeks now and my legs look like they've always been this way. No bruising, no tenderness, no more lumps, scars are fading quickly and the swelling has all but subsided save for a few sneaky patches. The results are in and i'm stoked. Have another look, it's OK i'll wait.
I could not be happier with the result and i'm even more surprised by how quickly i'm getting used to it, how easily I forget what I looked like before. The front is not too different just more streamlined, the back is where the real party happens - one of the first things I noticed was how much rounder my butt looks! It's an optical illusion because the eye is not drawn to the 'boop' at the sides but I didn't realise what a dramatic effect that would have.

I have a few thoughts on the whole process, some of which i've arrived at independently and some that have been provoked by comments on this review.

On the clinic:
First of all I want to address my initial concern with Dr Ajaka being abrupt at my first consultation. I have since found out that he was experiencing pretty devastating personal circumstances at the time and I do not believe that my initial meeting with him is an accurate representation of him as a doctor or a person. In all of my interactions with him since he has been calm and very kind, and I have heard him speaking with other patients who clearly adore him.
I do however find it extremely strange that the doctor I had my consultation with was not the doctor who performed the operation. I had a bit of email correspondence with the clinic too and everyone referred to Dr Ajaka as being my surgeon. He was the doctor I researched and put my trust in, and I was never told that another doctor would be performing the entire procedure. To realise mid surgery that someone I had just met whose qualifications I had not had time to research was operating on me was pretty shocking. This is something that surprises me more in hindsight, at 10 minutes into nitrous oxide and chill I couldn't have cared less who was in the room or if they'd ever opened a medical textbook.
I feel somewhat conflicted critiquing this because I am honestly so impressed with Dr Kishida's work and overall I am incredibly happy with the clinic and its staff. I am sure there are many reasons as to why a doctor might be swapped out, however I consider it to be totally unacceptable to not notify the patient as soon as possible. Had I known earlier that Dr Kishida would be my doctor and having access to reviews like this one (i'm not alone, there are other very positive reviews of him) I would have been more than happy to have him as my surgeon.
Overall the clinic has been pretty great though and very quick to address any issues. I have had little follow up with any of the doctors directly, it has mostly been nurses and the physio, but they seem to know exactly what they're doing and I trust them completely with my aftercare.

On the recovery:
My best piece of advice (and one I wish i'd listened to myself) is be kind to yourself. There was something so instantaneous about the actual procedure that doesn't do justice to how traumatic the experience is for your body. Any high expectations of how it will look or feel or move are not helpful, there is literally nothing you can do but look after yourself and get through each day. The time will pass and it will get easier but don't push your body too hard, it's using most of its energy healing all those little nerve endings you ruthlessly detached.
Oh and be prepared to have your body crushed by the physio. The massaging is good to do yourself and harder is always better, but nothing will prepare you for your last massage where the fat gets 'sculpted' back into place so it's not just one big lump. Apparently this is like, a 'thing' that body builders (and lipo patients) do for muscle definition and I turned into a 4 year old hollering the place down. I have a lot of spider veins in that area which heightened the sensation apparently (I never really touched them before because of my whole 'stop poking it' attitude to body pains) but whatever, that shit makes grown men cry and i'm not ashamed to say I did not endure it gracefully.

I also want to say that yes it is possible to get through recovery by yourself, but always have a back up plan and access to help. I had a few people emailing me about getting by without a carer but i'm a shit person and didn't reply to them in time to say ALWAYS HAVE YOUR PHONE WITH YOU IN CASE YOU ALMOST DIE. You won't almost die, but JUST IN CASE. Having my phone in my pocket was a huge mental relief knowing I could get help if I ever needed it. Also I really really really did need it that one time, so yeah, the phone thing.

On the results:
A consistent issue that came up on here with people who had their thighs done was that they were worried not enough had been taken. I was aware of this going in and discussed it with Dr Kishida whilst showing him Cosmos before & after reference pictures that I liked. I had 1.1 litres total removed from my inner and outer thighs and I think it was the perfect amount for me (I was 178cms and 65kgs when I went in). I'm supposedly still shrinking so I might even get a bit more off, but this is very much in proportion with the rest of my body and is also exactly what I asked for.

I'm going to go right ahead now and sound just like That Guy from the glossy pamphlets but this is definitely one of the best decisions I have ever made. I don't "Wish i'd done it sooner!!!!" because I feel like I made this decision at exactly the right time for me. I gave myself enough time to bond with my body and let the idea stew long enough to feel 100% comfortable with the decision. Financially it wasn't possible to do it any sooner, but now the money doesn't even register as being a concern. The only thing I would do differently (if it had been possible) is to aim to have the procedure in autumn or mid winter, I walked right into a Sydney spring heatwave 3 weeks in and I do not recommend it.

This has been such an exciting experience and I am more satisfied than I ever thought I would be with the results. I am also so shocked by the words of encouragement and support (and occasional abuse but whatever it's the internet, waddya gonna do ¯\_(?)_/¯) it has meant a lot to me to find such a supportive community of wonderfully curious, funny and honest people. This can be such an alienating thing to go through and I will be forever grateful to have found the reviews and comments that guided me through this experience. I hope this review has been helpful for anyone considering this procedure or doctor or clinic or even just wondering if that lumpy bit is normal.

Thanks for all the support, i'm off to go look at my butt again.