Time to Feel Human Again

It’s not like I didn’t know there would be crazy swelling at 5/6 weeks. Jenfrogrn only said it like twelve hundred times, so I had lots of advance notice. I think it was Finestirish who said that we must EXPECT it and ACCEPT it, which is totally Zen and actually really helpful as a mantra. It’s not like it snuck up on me or anything. I have been lying in wait for it for weeks. But that doesn’t mean I have to love it! Below my new belly button, my abdomen is rock hard and shiny and makes me feel like I am wearing a smallish inner tube filled with lead and a few ball bearings. I still can only wear dresses and yoga pants, and sometimes both. It’s getting hard to come up with enough normal outfits to keep the other moms at school from thinking I am too lazy to do laundry or get dressed.

HOWEVER. To be clear, I am VERY happy with my results and VERY glad I did this. This surgery has had a positive impact on my quality of life every day since I had it, including the week I spent drugged beyond reason in a rented hospital bed. And my post-op abdomen, even with the swelling, is such an improvement from the humiliating horror show of my former pregnant-looking abdomen that I truly feel any complaints I have are in the “Minor: Questionable Use of My Time” category.

I think I know what’s happening with my brain: at this point in the extended recovery process, as excited as I am to now have six weeks behind me, my mind has the freedom to look with certain longing toward final results in 12 – 18 months. Here’s what that’s like: I would just so loooove to see my belly really flat…..I would love to get back the muscle definition in my arms and legs, much of which turned to jelly during this 6 week sedentary period……I would love to feel less **wide** through my torso and hips, which is how I look with all this flank swelling….I would love to be done washing and wrangling silicone scar tape, and see only a faded line where my purple scar is now….I would love to stop needing to massage the hard lumps in my belly button (ouch)…..And I would love for my lower back swelling to resolve, so I can see the real curve of my tush once again.

Basically, now that I’ve hit the 6 week landmark with precious few complications, I have the incredible luxury of imagining my results For Real. When I think about that, I feel like a cartoon image of Sylvester when he contemplates swallowing Tweetie, with my eyeballs going round and round like two eternal spirals. How lucky am I to have such a future? But the droolworthiness of that future can make it hard to feel patient in the present.

I remind myself that I am healthy and happy. I accomplish more all the time, like for example the 4-mile interval run I did yesterday without having to stop for muscle tightness. I even did a plank and was proud to hold it for 20 whole seconds!!

Along with feeling impatient about eventually closing this whole chapter of my life forever, I’m amazed and humbled that it has gone so well so far. I had no idea I could go through something like this, undergo this surgery, and be okay after. I had NO IDEA I could do this. I had no idea that my huge belly could actually go away, forever.

So! All that considered, I guess I should feel honored to sport the 6 week swelling. For now, I will EXPECT and ACCEPT Mario’s spare tire, just as much as I will appreciate watching it slowly, and permanently, deflate.

Four weeks! Four weeks! In my first week post-op, I read updates from women here who had put 20+ days between themselves and their surgery and couldn’t imagine getting there. It was like thinking about what it would be like to be a high school junior while you’re still in fifth grade.

My recovery is going really, really well. By that I mean there have been no complications ***SO FAR, KNOCK WOOD***. I’ve had my share of paranoia-driven scares (Is that an infection? Is that a seroma? Is the binder making permanent dents? Did I just pop a stitch? Do I permanently look weird? Has the anesthesia given me a lobotomy? Oh no, don't sneeze!!!). But, none of them have amounted to actual problems. I’m still swollen, especially in my lower belly near my incision and my flanks, but it’s so much better. My scar is lumpy in places, but it’s flatter and more healed-looking all over. And best of all, in the mornings, when I first look in the mirror, I can see where my shape is headed in the next 5 – 11 months. I. Like. It.

I find myself daydreaming sometimes, wondering. What’s it like to show the my abdomen to the whole world, instead of constantly trying to cover it with folded arms, my handbag, my napkin, a raincoat, my child’s head, or a throw pillow? What’s it like not to burn with humiliation at my pregnant-looking reflection in the gym mirrors? What’s it like to get dressed by just putting on only 1 outfit instead of trying on 10, all of which end up as fabric carnage strewn across my bed except the one I’ve surrendered to wearing? What is like not to look down at the swinging pendulum of my crinkly hide when I lean over (or, in certain private moments, when I’m on all fours)? What’s it like to wear ruching because it looks good, not because I am forcing myself to swallow the lie that it downplays my un-downplayable roundness? What is it going to be like to have NO ONE ASK IF I AM PREGNANT EVER AGAIN, unless maybe they are blind or wasted? What is it going to be like to stop fighting a frustrating, rage-filled, tearful, loosing war with a part of my body, because the war is over? I am only beginning to answer those questions.

The first person who asked if I was pregnant did so on Valentine’s Day 2012. She was a mom an our preschool, very thin. I was wearing a belly-hiding fleece over my workout clothes, because I go to the gym every damn day. She put her hand on my arm and asked it in a hushed tone, just between us moms: “I never ask this, but it’s just so obvious: Are you pregnant?”

Happy Valentine’s Day to me.

Smash cut to present time. My 4 week post-op visit was yesterday. PS is thrilled. Because I asked, he gave me a printout of my OR photos, oh yes he did. They’re what you’d expect, featuring my abdominal flesh peeled back like a giant orange banana. There is blue ink drawn around the places on my muscle tissue where he sutured, including around the special bonus procedure wherein he used a piece of my own dermis to pull my obliques together. My favorite photo is the one in which I’m raised at a 30 degree angle and my skin is laying in its old position, before the incision was closed. Where my old belly button used to be, there is a cutout shaped like a little rounded doorway. It looks like a mouse hole in a cartoon. There is also a photo of the 800ccs he vacuumed out of my flanks.

The visuals are obsession-worthy. But I will spare you the OR photos because, let’s face it, not everyone wants to see that sh**.

PS told me he was able to take 10cm off my waist by closing my diastasis, and an additional 5cm by plicating my obliques via his dermal method. He said he made me tighter than 90% of his abdominoplasties. When I asked him why, he said he wanted to give me a waist. I guess there’s no waist on the planet Jupiter, and there wasn’t one on my big round belly either. Secondly, he said he wanted to try to ameliorate my acute lordosis (major sway-back). He showed me my Before photos, and I actually gasped. From the side, my old round belly is pulling my lower spine forward into a dramatic C shaped curve. No wonder I’ve had three SI joint injuries in five years! Whose spine could put up with that?? So I may have my PS to thank for helping my back as well as my front.

I’m still sporting a compression garment, this latest a little black number by Design Veronique. It wears like iron and I love it. It feels so much like a second skin that I’m just realizing while typing this that I haven’t washed it in 5 days. Sanitary! I’m faithfully using silicone epi-tape from Biodermis and silicone gel for scar therapy. It feels so incredibly, deeply good to be at the CG/scar treatment stage, rather than the “Gee I hope I live to see my kids tomorrow” stage. As huge lateral surgical scars go, mine looks pretty good. PS says I’m cleared to exercise, and even run, but I still can’t walk without feeling like I’m in labor so that’s not happening for a while. But to my amazement, today I walked in the woods for an hour, and I lived to tell about it! PS also cleared me for *special marital exercise*, though he said it couldn’t involve heavy lifting. ???? I don’t know, I’ll let your mind run with that.

I know my recover is far from over. I know the swelling and the scar will both get much worse before they get better. I may still end up with complications. And I am definitely still dealing with some emotional and cognitive issues following general anesthesia. But gosh darn it, I fried some awesome eggplant tonight, and I stood the hell straight up while I did it, and my belly is F-L-A-T under my dress. So it looks like mama CAN get her life back after all, including feeling human again.

I call it Me 2.0!

Thought I'd update with some shots of me modeling my loooovely new silicone strips from Biodermis.com! My PS swears by them, and I like them but they are super weird. Wrangling them as they stretch and stick all over themselves is an art form I haven't yet mastered. I'm sticking the strips across my horizontal incision, and I cut a smaller piece to put on my vertical scar where my old BB was, and I'm putting silicone gel on my BB. I'll be wearing this silicone stuff 24 hours/day for at least the next 12 weeks. I can feel hypertrophic scar formation all over my scars, so it's a good thing my scabs are gone so I can start using this stuff now. I'm also gingerly doing some massage on the worst collagen lumps, but it's a little scary to be handling my incision site in that way! PS says I have to, though, so I'm taking a leap of faith. Here I also added a couple of shots of me actually holding my abs in a little, like I will go back to doing in everyday life once I'm back to exercising. I'm still swollen and have no definition in my torso obviously, but I'll take it over the big pregnant-looking beach ball!