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I’m 33 years old, no children and had lipo of...
I’m 33 years old, no children and had lipo of the lower abdomen and flanks. I thought about getting this procedure for about four years before taking the plunge! I decided I wanted to make sure I gave it all to achieving better level of fitness before opting to have surgery. I am 5’6” and went from 150 lbs down to 125 lbs but the lower tummy wouldn’t budge. I had a bulky spare tire that made me look a couple months pregnant. Most women in my family struggle with this bulge and I realized I couldn’t compete with my genetics so I finally decided to get liposuction. I’m now 7 days post op but will write a review of my process and experiences up until now.
Like I said, I’ve thought about this surgery for four years so I had plenty of time to research local PS’s. I ultimately decided to use Dr. Robbins at Des Moines Plastic Surgery because he is certified by The American Board of Plastic Surgery as well as 3 other boards and the surgery center is accredited by American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities.
At my pre-op appointment my PS gave me Arnica dissolvable tablets to take the day before and morning of surgery to be continued for 5 days in addition to prescriptions for cephalexin and Vicodin. I also purchased a cream with Arnica Montana as I read a lot of good things about its healing properties against swelling and bruising. You can see from my pics my bruising has been minimal. I don’t know if this is because of the Arnica or not but I do consider myself someone who bruises easily. When I give my dog a bath I have to lay a couple towels on the tire floor because if I don’t my knees bruise! So I was very concerned about bruising with surgery am happy to report (so far) I have minimal bruising. Hooray! I might also suggest doing a little tanning prior to surgery to hide some of the bruises. I just felt like having a little tan made me feel better about the bruises that did surface, but that’s just me.
My procedure was tumescent liposuction under general anesthesia. This was my first time under general anesthesia and I’ll touch on that point again in a little bit.
I had my surgery on a Friday. After my surgery I was sent home about 3 hours after I had arrived to the surgery center. Now I’m not quite sure what it feels like to be bitten by a shark, but I’m pretty sure the pain I felt after my surgery was similar! I will not sugar coat it – IT HURTS. I got home and laid in bed moaning in pain waiting and praying to whoever would listen for the Vicodin to kick in. After an hour of this I finally figured out if I laid very, very still I could almost fall asleep. And I finally did nap for about 2 hours, whew! I somehow got my boyfriend’s attention to come get me and waddled myself out to the couch, which would be my new home for the next 48 hours.
The day of surgery I made it a point to drink almost a gallon of water for two reasons. 1) It would help flush out the fluids and 2) it would force me to get up and not stay seated. This second point is very important to prevent blood clots even though clots aren’t as likely with just abdominal liposuction but still, that’s a road I did not want to go down! I had to pee every 20-30 minutes and a few times I don’t think it was even that long. It almost got annoying but it’s just the body’s way of getting rid of the fluids injected into you. My incisions were stitched closed so my drainage was pretty minimal.
After the longest day of my life I was 1 day post-op and not mobile on my own. You’ll definitely want someone around for 4 days or so – or at least I was glad I had someone around. Day one I needed help up and off the couch and the bed. Whether you shower on day or day 2 after surgery, have someone there with you because once you take your compression garment off you’ll likely feel dizzy. I found this out the hard way then came here to read others’ experience and learned it was normal. I almost passed out so on day 2 when I took the belt off I had my boyfriend in the room just in case. After that I just sat down when taking it off and by day 5 it didn’t bother me at all.
At this point the swelling had started in my upper pubic area (some call it the Ken Doll) and that was just about as painful as everything else. Luckily that went away by day 4.
Post op day 2 – what a relief!! Huge difference in pain. I could get out of bed on my own and get on the couch without help. I could walk through the house and a little outside without much discomfort, which was shocking to me since right after surgery I wanted to curl up and disappear! So even though it hurts, please know it gets better fast. This day my emotions must have gone out of whack because I started crying over nothing and sobbing "why did I do this?? wah wah wah" I came here and read that this is normal and I have dealt with an emotional roller coaster a few days since! I read the fat cells are endocrine cells so I guess it makes sense. Also notable, I had started my period the day before surgery and by the end of day 1 it had completely ended, which I also read is normal. You might even skip your period for the next month or two so I guess after all this we at least get a couple cramp-free months!
Post op day 3 – took my pictures. Swelling started to kick in and on this day I started feeling some dizziness and lightheaded. The pain decreased quite a bit and nothing happened.
Post op day 4 – I woke up this morning with a heart rate over 100, a low grade temp and dizziness while laying down. Called in to the nurse and didn’t get much direction other than they “thought it wasn’t anything to worry about” which didn’t quite cut it for me. So I ended up taking myself to a walk-in urgent care clinic just to be on the safe side. I learned that sometimes not getting enough oxygen can cause a low temp which might have been caused by my compression garment. Dr. said to be sure to take several deep breaths throughout the day to keep fluid from getting on the lungs and to increase my protein intake, which I had been trying to do already. According to her, the protein helps fluids stay in the bloodstream where it does the most good. So with that I’ve been trying to eat even more protein since.
Post op day 5 – still a lot of dizziness but it was time to get back to work. Took it easy on my walk in and made sure to get up from my desk every 30-60 minutes to walk around a bit. Swelling hit it’s peak today but I’ve been on a low-sodium diet and swelling as not gravitated to my ankles or calves. I’m at my pre-op weight again. Today, the itching started and still comes and goes.
Post op day 6 – again a lot of dizziness and cognitive issues and nothing else too exciting to note other than the pain was pretty well gone.
I’m now post op day 7 and today I had my post-op appointment with my PS. Said everything looks fine and I got my stitches removed. I’d been wearing a Band-Aid with Polysporin on my incisions for a couple of days now to try to help minimize scaring. I mentioned my dizziness to my PS but he didn’t have much to say about it other than I may need to go to my family dr to have my hemoglobin checked.
So that brings me to general anesthesia. I’m not liking what I’m reading in regard to GA and it appears people can suffer from post operative cognitive dysfunction or possibly similar problems related to the GA. My dizziness has not gotten any better and my thinking skills are out the window, which has made working nearly impossible and sort of embarrassing as I have to ask questions to things I should know. I’m going to give it another week before I worry about this too much as I know from talking to friends that sometimes feeling crummy after surgery can be normal. BUT if I had this to do again I would request local anesthesia and would likely even seek out a PS who does this as mine did not mention only local anesthesia. I wish I would have researched the risks of GA more and educated myself better in this area…live and learn I guess but I hope this goes away!! That is truly my only real complaint as this point.
Has anyone reading this had this issue or know someone who has?
My PS also said today that I could start massaging my abdomen but I’m not sure how I feel about massaging after reading mixed reviews so I’m wondering if someone has any thoughts on this with their own experience.
So here I am – day 7. My pictures are from day 3 and I’ll post more soon. I need to get my pre-op pics from my PS too so we can better track my results. Sorry this was long, I had a week’s worth of stories to share :)
Like I said, I’ve thought about this surgery for four years so I had plenty of time to research local PS’s. I ultimately decided to use Dr. Robbins at Des Moines Plastic Surgery because he is certified by The American Board of Plastic Surgery as well as 3 other boards and the surgery center is accredited by American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities.
At my pre-op appointment my PS gave me Arnica dissolvable tablets to take the day before and morning of surgery to be continued for 5 days in addition to prescriptions for cephalexin and Vicodin. I also purchased a cream with Arnica Montana as I read a lot of good things about its healing properties against swelling and bruising. You can see from my pics my bruising has been minimal. I don’t know if this is because of the Arnica or not but I do consider myself someone who bruises easily. When I give my dog a bath I have to lay a couple towels on the tire floor because if I don’t my knees bruise! So I was very concerned about bruising with surgery am happy to report (so far) I have minimal bruising. Hooray! I might also suggest doing a little tanning prior to surgery to hide some of the bruises. I just felt like having a little tan made me feel better about the bruises that did surface, but that’s just me.
My procedure was tumescent liposuction under general anesthesia. This was my first time under general anesthesia and I’ll touch on that point again in a little bit.
I had my surgery on a Friday. After my surgery I was sent home about 3 hours after I had arrived to the surgery center. Now I’m not quite sure what it feels like to be bitten by a shark, but I’m pretty sure the pain I felt after my surgery was similar! I will not sugar coat it – IT HURTS. I got home and laid in bed moaning in pain waiting and praying to whoever would listen for the Vicodin to kick in. After an hour of this I finally figured out if I laid very, very still I could almost fall asleep. And I finally did nap for about 2 hours, whew! I somehow got my boyfriend’s attention to come get me and waddled myself out to the couch, which would be my new home for the next 48 hours.
The day of surgery I made it a point to drink almost a gallon of water for two reasons. 1) It would help flush out the fluids and 2) it would force me to get up and not stay seated. This second point is very important to prevent blood clots even though clots aren’t as likely with just abdominal liposuction but still, that’s a road I did not want to go down! I had to pee every 20-30 minutes and a few times I don’t think it was even that long. It almost got annoying but it’s just the body’s way of getting rid of the fluids injected into you. My incisions were stitched closed so my drainage was pretty minimal.
After the longest day of my life I was 1 day post-op and not mobile on my own. You’ll definitely want someone around for 4 days or so – or at least I was glad I had someone around. Day one I needed help up and off the couch and the bed. Whether you shower on day or day 2 after surgery, have someone there with you because once you take your compression garment off you’ll likely feel dizzy. I found this out the hard way then came here to read others’ experience and learned it was normal. I almost passed out so on day 2 when I took the belt off I had my boyfriend in the room just in case. After that I just sat down when taking it off and by day 5 it didn’t bother me at all.
At this point the swelling had started in my upper pubic area (some call it the Ken Doll) and that was just about as painful as everything else. Luckily that went away by day 4.
Post op day 2 – what a relief!! Huge difference in pain. I could get out of bed on my own and get on the couch without help. I could walk through the house and a little outside without much discomfort, which was shocking to me since right after surgery I wanted to curl up and disappear! So even though it hurts, please know it gets better fast. This day my emotions must have gone out of whack because I started crying over nothing and sobbing "why did I do this?? wah wah wah" I came here and read that this is normal and I have dealt with an emotional roller coaster a few days since! I read the fat cells are endocrine cells so I guess it makes sense. Also notable, I had started my period the day before surgery and by the end of day 1 it had completely ended, which I also read is normal. You might even skip your period for the next month or two so I guess after all this we at least get a couple cramp-free months!
Post op day 3 – took my pictures. Swelling started to kick in and on this day I started feeling some dizziness and lightheaded. The pain decreased quite a bit and nothing happened.
Post op day 4 – I woke up this morning with a heart rate over 100, a low grade temp and dizziness while laying down. Called in to the nurse and didn’t get much direction other than they “thought it wasn’t anything to worry about” which didn’t quite cut it for me. So I ended up taking myself to a walk-in urgent care clinic just to be on the safe side. I learned that sometimes not getting enough oxygen can cause a low temp which might have been caused by my compression garment. Dr. said to be sure to take several deep breaths throughout the day to keep fluid from getting on the lungs and to increase my protein intake, which I had been trying to do already. According to her, the protein helps fluids stay in the bloodstream where it does the most good. So with that I’ve been trying to eat even more protein since.
Post op day 5 – still a lot of dizziness but it was time to get back to work. Took it easy on my walk in and made sure to get up from my desk every 30-60 minutes to walk around a bit. Swelling hit it’s peak today but I’ve been on a low-sodium diet and swelling as not gravitated to my ankles or calves. I’m at my pre-op weight again. Today, the itching started and still comes and goes.
Post op day 6 – again a lot of dizziness and cognitive issues and nothing else too exciting to note other than the pain was pretty well gone.
I’m now post op day 7 and today I had my post-op appointment with my PS. Said everything looks fine and I got my stitches removed. I’d been wearing a Band-Aid with Polysporin on my incisions for a couple of days now to try to help minimize scaring. I mentioned my dizziness to my PS but he didn’t have much to say about it other than I may need to go to my family dr to have my hemoglobin checked.
So that brings me to general anesthesia. I’m not liking what I’m reading in regard to GA and it appears people can suffer from post operative cognitive dysfunction or possibly similar problems related to the GA. My dizziness has not gotten any better and my thinking skills are out the window, which has made working nearly impossible and sort of embarrassing as I have to ask questions to things I should know. I’m going to give it another week before I worry about this too much as I know from talking to friends that sometimes feeling crummy after surgery can be normal. BUT if I had this to do again I would request local anesthesia and would likely even seek out a PS who does this as mine did not mention only local anesthesia. I wish I would have researched the risks of GA more and educated myself better in this area…live and learn I guess but I hope this goes away!! That is truly my only real complaint as this point.
Has anyone reading this had this issue or know someone who has?
My PS also said today that I could start massaging my abdomen but I’m not sure how I feel about massaging after reading mixed reviews so I’m wondering if someone has any thoughts on this with their own experience.
So here I am – day 7. My pictures are from day 3 and I’ll post more soon. I need to get my pre-op pics from my PS too so we can better track my results. Sorry this was long, I had a week’s worth of stories to share :)
Provider Review
Dr. Robbins