Well, I made it. It’s been almost three months since my surgery date and I’m starting feel like my old-new self again. I say old-new, because I’m still me, but I feel better – improved, if you will. Some days I still can’t believe that I had the nerve to go through with two life-altering surgeries, but I am forever thankful I found enough of it to not back out. To catch you up to speed, on November 4th I underwent a 6-hour trio of surgeries – a breast reduction, brachioplasty on both arms and an abdominalplasty (otherwise known as a tummy tuck). God, even when I type that now, I feel like a “Real Housewife of Waterloo Region.” Isn’t it sad that such a connotation exists? For those of you unaware, in 2009, I had RNY gastric bypass surgery and lost about 120 lbs. It left me with loosey-goosey skin pretty much everywhere, and breasts that I affectionately referred to as size 38-LONG. After dealing with rashes and backaches and ill-fitting clothes for almost two years, I was ready for a change.
So, the surgery. I was very nervous, I admit. I was a basket case the night before while my fiancé and I drove in to Scarborough to stay overnight at a hotel, since we had to be at the hospital at 6 a.m. Pre-op was harrowing the next morning – registration, IV set up, getting into the one-size-fits-most gown for surgery and sitting in a room with another 25 patients, waiting for my gurney-taxi was almost my undoing. But I made it. Then I met my team of nurses, the anaesthesiologist, and my surgeon again in the operation room. Perhaps the most unnerving thing came next – the surgeon literally used a Sharpie marker and drew all over me! He marked off where he would make incisions, how much skin he would remove, even where my newly located nipples would go! Then, I stretched out on the table, breathed in the glorious gas, and slept.
I woke up feeling like a mummy. My arms, stomach and breasts were taped and bandaged to within an inch of my life and I had trouble moving. In particular, sitting up on my own was impossible, both because of the wrappings and because of the 30-odd internal stitches that were holding my stomach muscles in place just under the skin. It took nearly 3 weeks to be able to sit up on my own, with no assistance. I was also surprisingly swollen, both at the incision sites and all over – IV fluids coupled with anaesthesia and pain killers tend to do that to me.
I only had to stay one night in the hospital, thank heavens. I was sent home the next morning at 10 a.m., with a purse full of Percocet and Tylenol 3.
I have to compliment my talented surgeon, Dr. Michael Kreidstein of Toronto. He’s known as an expert in post-weight loss surgery skin removal and body contouring, and he really delivered. He was very upfront and truthful from my first consultation, warning me that the skin may be gone, but he would be leaving scars in its place. That never mattered to me. I felt very constrained in my old, floppy skin and I would have taken a thousand scars over pounds of excess dermis any day!
Kreidstein was also much attuned to my needs as an out-of-town patient. Kitchener is about an hour and a half from the hospital where I had surgery, and so is his office, so to cut down on frequent trips in to see him during my recovery, the doctor arranged for an at-home health care nurse to visit me and change my bandages. And because he requested the service, it was covered by OHIP. Score. It made me feel much better to know that a professional would be checking in on me.
I also have to shout out to my wonderful sister, who stayed with me throughout my 6-week recovery and acted as my own personal Florence Nightingale. She changed bandages, made meals, kept me in clean towels and nighties, provided a library of must-read books and lectured me on staying in bed when appropriate. In the early weeks, she also acted as my bathroom chaperone – I couldn’t get out of bed by myself for the all-important, middle-of-the-night bathroom visit, and I’d text message her in the other room! The alarm on her phone would wake her, and she’d trudge in to help me. Wow, thank heavens for family.
Props also to my loving fiancé, who did everything in his power to make sure I stayed in bed and rested properly – from cooking and cleaning to making runs to Starbucks, he was a God-send.
Now – down to the nitty-gritty. The surgeries were designed to remove excess skin, and they did. A total of 12 lbs of skin were removed from my stomach, leaving me with a very thin but very long scar that runs from hip to hip. Another pound or so was removed from each breast, reducing my cup size from a G to a D and increasing the perkiness by about, oh, a million percent. Seriously, they point towards the sky like they’ve never done, and it’s fantastic! And finally, about ½ lb of skin was removed from each arm. That may not sound significant, but it sure is nice to wave at someone and have my upper underarm stop waving at the same time as my hand. The scars there were the toughest to heal, and are redder and wider than all the rest. Dr. K says this is typical since we use our arms so much, and the area where the scars are located (from just under my elbow, all the way to my armpit and looping down around the pit from front to back) is hard to bandage.
In total, I dropped an entire dress size just from skin removal. For the first time in my entire life, I have a flat stomach with no fat or skin hanging from it. I can wear a normal sized bra, bought at a normal sized boutique. And this summer, despite the scars, I’ll be excited to wear strapless and halter tops!
In all of my giddy wonderment, I don’t mean to undermine how difficult, painful and long the recovery was (and still is!). I was bed-bound for about a week, had to rest out of work for six weeks, and had to be heavily bandaged for most of them. Even now, I wear adhesive silicone strips on my arm scars to help combat inflammation and redness, in the hopes of limiting some of the scarring. I also took a fair share of pain killers during that time, which really messed up my sleep schedule and appetite, and when I moved too much or too quickly, I managed to rip out internal stitches holding my stomach muscles in place on two occasions (and it didn’t tickle). To be frank, plastic surgery is not for the faint of heart.
All that being said, if I had it to do over again, I would. Just this evening, I did 30 minutes on the treadmill – running! This is a feat I could never do before, thanks to all of the extra skin that would bounce around and damage the tissue under it. It feels so freeing to just RUN! And it finally feels like I have an outward appearance that matches how I feel on the inside. That alone is something I never thought I’d get the opportunity experience.
So there you have it. I’m very happy with the results now that I’ve installed replacement parts! I feel like a part of my journey is ending now – but also that a whole new chapter (one where I’m finally comfortable in my own skin) is just beginning.
