AvaFern

I was told not to be fully submerged for two weeks, largely because they don't want spa, pool, or bath Water getting into the incisions, more so than because the heat of the spa would be an issue. Even if your doctor is out of town, his office should still be able to get you an answer.

I'm on depo and I haven't had a period in literally a decade. The week after surgery I had some spotting, which hasn't happened before or since. I imagine that the procedure can mess with your cycle in a variety of ways, so I doubt this is a matter of early menopause and much more your body adjusting to the trauma.

You are totally normal! I was freaked out at about a week after surgery that I had ruined my whole life. Things get much better as time goes on. I blame it on the anesthesia, because I tend to get the same level of emotional hot mess at about the 4-7 day point after every surgery I have (which at this point is the sleeve and three plastics procedures). You just have to remember that time passes and you will inevitably feel better. Embrace the misery...in a year you will look back on it and think, wow, I feel wonderful now!

Congrats! My advice would be that if you have the option and the ability to pay the price difference to convert the panni to an abdominoplasty, you should go for it. I've seen others talking about it and it's usually about 2K to get the better procedure and your insurance covers the remainder. I had an abdominoplasty and while I didn't notice the difference that stitching my abs together made, other people really did. You will LOVE your new flat stomach though...it is something I still like to look at in the mirror, 8 months after the procedure. In terms of time off from work, if you have a desk job and you can take a week, go for it. I was back to working at a desk for 8-12 hours days on 4 days after the procedure, but that was out of neccessity. I would have preferred to have at least a week, but pain wise it isn't hard. In terms of pain, if you have a good surgeon, the pain is minimal. I took Percocet for the first three days and then nothing after that. The pain is more about discomfort, because it's a little hard to move around and it's irritating to try to walk when you can't stand up straight. Without the ab-stitching component, you may not have the issues I did which involved not being able to really use my ab muscles for a few weeks. Good luck!

Yay for average! I was really excited when I finally broke into the "normal" part on a BMI chart, although I do tend to think that this isn't terribly accurate. I had to be 137 to be considered normal, and honestly I was stronger, faster, and probably healthier at 150 that I am now at 129 or than I was at 137. I'm not crazy about the BMI chart, but there doesn't seem to be a much better way either.

@@BethinPA I didn't see your last reply to my first post until now. Has your doctor tried the alcohol route? I was at about 6 weeks when we used alcohol and it cleared it up in a week. I would not have the tolerance to have it drained for the entire summer and I would demand that he consider a sclerosing agent. He's wasting both your time and his by constantly draining it without trying any other option. The alcohol my doctor used had a higher percentage of alcohol than the kind they regularly keep in the office, because I remember him saying he ordered it especially for me. He emptied my seroma, then pushed the area full of alcohol, I sat there for a half hour, he came back and drained out the alcohol, and in a week it was gone. We had planned to go the sclerosing agent route one more time after that, but there was no need. Honestly, if my doc had told me it would take months to clear up a seroma and the only option was continuously draining it, I would have gone to another surgeon. Ain't nobody got time for that.

During one of my after pictures (I took them every 10 pounds) someone I showed the picture too said, oh my gosh, look at your poor feet in that first picture. I hadn't realized how swollen my feet were before except when I would try to run. Enjoy the process, you have a lot more NSV's to come!

I notice I'm also weaker. I do jiu jitsu, which really is supposed to be about technique more than strength or size and skill wise I've done it for years, but depending on my weight I am either pretty decent or pretty bad. When I was my heaviest I was really slow, so I wasn't any good. When I was around 155-160, I was fast, I was big (ish) and I was strong. Now that I'm 129 I get my butt handed to me every single round because I am far and away the smallest person in class and when someone can just sit on you and you can't lift them off, it tends to make it a little less fun. In terms of moving stuff, I think I've just gotten more creative. I had to lift a huge table a few weeks ago, so while I couldn't just hoist it up like before, I still did get it moved, I just used fulcroms and my brain insteead. When I really need to lift something I can, I just don't have the strength to lift as much for as long or as repetitively as I did when I was about 20-30 pounds bigger.

Tell them you are having a hiatal hernia repair, which technically may be true since a good portion of patients have the hiatal hernia repaired at the same time as sleeve surgery. It really is none of their business, so you shouldn't have to tell them anything, but I have found that lying is far easier than being evasive and keeps the nosy people at bay. It's your health choice and your decision whether or not to tell anyone- if you want to keep it to yourself and fibbing a bit (which in this case may not even be a lie at all) is the best way to do it, then go for it.

Being financially prudent does not count as chickening out. If you are concerned about the future of your finances, then it is absolutely the right decision to wait on the tummy tuck. If, however, your decision is motivated by a concern about the recovery, then as someone who has had the procedure, I would encourage you to continue to think about it. I have had literally pretty much every body procedure you can have in the body contouring scope of plastic surgery and the TT is far and away the one that I am most consistenly in awe of the results. The worst part about the TT was that it was really hard to actually get out of bed for a few weeks, since you can't really do any form of sit-up motion. (also- TMI here, the first week, pooping was fairly evil when your ab muscles are all stitched together). Overall, as long as you are financially comfortable, don't chicken out on the procedure, but if you are unsure about the future, then being a responsible, financially secure adult is not even remotely considered chickening out

I haven't told any men I date that I had WLS or that I've lost a substantial amount of weight. To be fair, I may have some explaining to do if any of them ever see me naked with the lights on and I have to explain why I have a billion plastic surgery scars. I will never, ever tell someone I am dating about WLS because it creates a stigma that I don't want to have to deal with- it is my secret for life. As for the plastics, clearly I was a fatty at one point, so my plan is to be like...well I'm hot now, if you can't handle the scars, take your little boy bs and get gone. Recently I was talking to one of them and I mentioned that I was going to try to eat more juice and veggies the next few days and he was like, well why don't you eat healthy all the time? I'm like, I'm 130 pounds I can afford to have some nacho dip occassionally, and his response was...well you should have self-control. Totally irked me and made me very aware of the fact that if he knew I had been fat, I sincerely doubt he would think I was attractive. I try to think of how I would respond to a guy who looked fantastic in clothing and for the most part out of clothing who had a morbid obesity problem in the past, and I'll be honest- I would judge him as harshly as I judge myself. I can't get mad at someone for thinking I was a lazy, no self-control fatty when my inaccurate, but honest, thought about them is the same thing. Ideally I can explain away all my plastic surgery scars by saying that as I got older, I noticed that things weren't as tight as they used to be and genetically I had more sag than I wanted, so I had a bit of work done. Lying in relationships is clearly the key to success. lol

@ I had the procedures you mentioned in your post. I had the groin incision thigh lift twice. I didn't like the results the first time so the doctor did it a second time for free. I didn't want the big scar going down to my knee so I stuck with the lesser of the two surgeries. Results-wise I am WAY better than before and my scars the first time around evened out perfectly to nice flat scars. The second surgery was last week, lol, but I have had no healing issues and I think my doc did just as good of a job the second time around as the first. The boobs are a plus, I would agree, and while the brachioplasty comes with the tradeoff of very visible scars, I would still have it done again. I currently have brachioplasty scar shame, largely because I've had my arms covered all winter and soon enough I'm going to have to wear short sleeves and I am concerned people will make will make fun of me. I think with a little make-up it will be ok and once I'm past initially having my scars seen, I doubt it will be an issue. The fantastic contour is worth the scars to get ride of the big bat wings. My abdominoplasty is still the surgery that blows me away. Holy flat stomach. I have never in my life had a totally flat hard stomach and I love it. I'm still recovering from the posterior body lift and auto butt augment, but comparable to the front half, I've never had a butt that wasn't droopy looking. Plastics are the bees' knees, but with all the plastics in the world, I'm not going to grow 6 inches and have a BMI of 18 like those VS girls. Lucky b*tches!

I know exactly how you feel. I was a little about 25 pounds from goal when I realized that even when I hit my goal weight, I was not going to be remotely attractive in anything that didn't cover most of my body. Over the course of the last 8 months I've had 3 plastic surgeries and while I look in the mirror now and I look pretty decent, all the surgery in the world isn't going to make me a Victoria Secret model either!

If you are in Florida, check out Dr. Ankit Desai in Jacksonville, FL. I had a series of three surgeries with him over the past 8 months and I could not have asked for more fantastic results. I had a tummy tuck, breast lift and augmentation, brachioplasty, groin incision thigh lift, and posterior body lift with buttocks auto-augmentation. I went from looking like a saggy tube sock to looking, pretty darn fantastic. I no longer have any loose skin, I have healed very well from all of my surgeries, and he and his staff are very good at handling any questions you have quickly. I am a HUGE fan of Dr. Desai, not just because he is an incredibly talented surgeon, but because he is a really nice person. He is extremely patient-centered in that he really listens to what you are looking for and explains very well beforehand what he will be able to acheive. This probably sounds silly, but I felt really self-conscious standing basically naked, all saggy and flabby in front of this really successful doctor and he never made me feel anything other than good about myself. I appreciate his surgical skill, but I also appreciate that he is sincerely kind to his patients. Here is their website: https://www.plasticsurgeryjacksonville.com/

I didn't buy any of those things, except the food scale which was actually pretty useful because I clearly have no grasp of what is an ounce of food. I use regular Vitamins from the grocery store- probably Nature's Bounty or Sundown brand. I hate Protein drinks, so I have never used them. Don't buy the entire big thing before you know if you like it or not. I am now 19 months post-op and I am WAY cheaper at the grocery store and in terms of things I consume than I ever was before. It's surprising how it isn't terribly expensive to eat healthy when for the most part you eat roughly what a child eats, lol.

I used to gulp Water by the bottle during workouts. I do boxing and jiu jitsu and I would easily go through 2, 20oz bottles each hour. I was very concerned I would be dehydrated because I can't take more than a few swallows at a time anymore, but it hasn't been an issue for me. I now drink maybe 1.5 bottles of water on a really tough 20 hour practice, and often even less than that. I just make sure I drink consistently throughout the day and later that night and it all seems to even out in the end.

I would 100% say wait until after your wedding. This may be the inner fatty in me, but I would really want to enjoy my wedding cake, the food, the champagne, and all of that on my honeymoon afterward. You will feel like complete crap if you get the surgery before your wedding. I also have a high pain tolerance and had very little issue with pain. My issue was that you literally cannot eat much of anything, so you pretty much feel like garbage for a few weeks. You have the rest of your life to be thin...scheduling your surgery now as opposed to scheduling it in June really won't matter in the grand scheme of life and you will get to truly enjoy one of the most significant events of your life. As someone who at 19 months out and is finally at goal weight, I can absolutely say I would have waited to go through the process until after my wedding. It is a tough first few weeks and if you make your goal weight one month later than would have been the case otherwise, will it matter more to you than being able to really enjoy your wedding? Eat that cake! Drink that champagne! Have hot sex with your husband! It will be the last time for a few months you will really get to enjoy any of that- it may as well be at your wedding.

The best advice I have for you is what has really helped me..."time passes anyway". No matter what you do, time passes, and you can spend it being overweight or you can spend it working dilligently every day toward being healthy. Either way, a year from now, is still going to happen, and what you did right this second will matter then. Right now it stinks, you feel crummy, you're worried you made a mistake, you just wish life would go back to normal, except a year from now, when you're going for a jog, or you're trying on a new size pants, and you look in the mirror, you will look back and realize that all the misery was just time passing and you chose to pass it in a way that made the future better. I recently just had my last plastics surgery and of the three this one has been the worst. I keep telling myself, time will pass and everyday will get better. Before you know it, all of your pain will be gone, and you'll feel SO much better. You'll wake up full of energy, you'll hop out of bed, you won't need that CPAP anymore, and you'll look back on this week and these few days and you'll say, damn, glad that's over with, but wow was it worth it. So, suck it up...the next few days are going to be awful. In fact, the next few weeks might be pretty bad. You'll want to cry and yell at people and curse yourself and then one day you're going to wake up and you're going to think, well today doesn't suck yet. Then one day you'll go to sleep and you'll realize you had a normal day...no pain, nothing weird going on with your stomach, and you didn't get irrationally furious with anyone the whole day. Pretty soon almost everyday will be like that and you'll be like most of us here and be so happy with yourself for making a decision that right this second feels like the biggest screw-up ever. Time passes...you may as well spend it doing something good for yourself, and that is exactly what you chose to do. For lack of a less cliche phrase...this too shall pass.

If I had to do it all over again, I would. There are days where for some reason everything makes me sick...I have become an expert puker, which never used to be the case. Sometimes I am frustrated that I can't just sit down and enjoy a meal anymore, especially with people who question why I'm not eating (only 3 people know I had the surgery). I'm really careful about how I plan dates with people I don't know well enough to know that food makes me sick, and sometimes while I'm barfing, toilet Water splashes me in the face, and that kind of blows. Two days ago though I hit my goal weight...a weight I haven't been at since I was 18. As of today, I am still at that weight, which is a little exciting, since I usually drop and then gain a pound back for a little while. There is no one who can call me fat anymore, I fit in all size small clothes, and I am no longer ashamed to be seen in public. I am 100% sure that without the sleeve I could never have lost this much weight- I quite simply eat too much and the sleeve prevents that. So, there are points that I am a little frustrated with myself for not being able to eat small portions like a normal person, but I would make the decision to have the sleeve all over again every single day.

Haha, I love Olivia...although I'd also gain weight on her diet.

GOAL! Finally! I woke up this morning and I was 129.4 and my goal was to see 129 on the scale, so 129.8 would have worked for me. I hit 130 back in January and I floated between 131-134 for the last three months. A week ago today I had my final plastics surgery, which was a posterior lower body lift, inner thigh lift, and auto butt augmentation. The day of surgery I was 133 and I’ve pretty much had no desire to eat anything while being on drugs for a few days and being back in the compression garments (which I swear squish my stomach to the point I can’t eat without barfing). So between whatever skin was removed and whatever weight I lost from not eating terribly much, today I am officially at the goal weight I picked back in September of 2013. Amusingly enough, my goal was always 119 but I thought 129 seemed a little less ridiculous and I would probably never make it there anyway. Today is a beautiful, warm, sunny day, and I celebrated by putting on my new, size small bikini, my cute size small cover up, and spending all of 20 minutes laying outside by the pool before I got bored. I don’t really see a girl who weighs 129 pounds in the mirror…she has a lot of scars and flaws, but she is infinitely happier than she was 577 days ago when I started my pre-op diet, 1 week before sleeve surgery. It has been exactly 1 year and 7 months to the day when I started my journey and today, I got to where I never imagined I actually would. 577 days ago I was on this site, reading through all of the posts of successful people, and hoping that one day I would get to make three posts- the day I hit a normal BMI, the day I hit 100 pounds lost, and the day I hit my goal. Here’s to the last post of the three posts I hoped that I would one day be making. I'm feeling nostalgic, sniffle. Thank-you to all of the people who have been kind to me on here- I have enjoyed having this board full of fantastic people to share my experience with. Excuse me- I am now going to go eat a pan of brownies…Just kidding!!!

Why can't I just delete a post? Updated version...bought a new butt and it looks fantastic. I had a little freak-out over nothing a few days after surgery...all better.

It sounds like you've found a happy medium. I don't have kids, but I am the oldest child and my younger sister is 10 years younger than me. When I was a kid my mom was obsessive about dieting and the scale, which by no fault of hers rubbed off on me. I think I was on my first diet in kindegarten and the first time I stopped eating for a week was in 6th grade. Weight was a HUGE issue in my family and no matter how athletic or healthy I was, I was never thin enough. As I got older, I think my parents realized that pushing the "you're fat, go on a diet, the scale is all that matters" mindset created a child that could never see herself as anything other than a fat girl who needed to lose weight. When I left home at 18, they totally switched things up with my sister. There was never any mention of dieting, never any talk of exercising, no one ever called her fat or did anything to make her feel like her weight was any form of an issue. My sister is now a brilliant, successful, popular, and amazing young woman...who also happens to weigh 340-ish pounds and because there is no discussion about weight at home, she doesn't have the same incentive to monitor her weight like I did. I would get fat and thin and fat and thin, but my poor sister just keeps gaining, and my mom refuses to do anything about it. The result is one child who has spent her life binging and starving and hating what she looks like in the mirror, but who is at a healthy weight, and one child who doesn't have an ability to control her food intake and is at a dangerously unhealthy weight, but her self-worth is fully intact. I suppose our family shows how you can try your best to be a parent and do the right thing and two totally different approaches can still produce a child who is in some way dealing with a future that we would not have wished for them.

So clearly you're miserable. I also hated my doctor if it makes you feel any better...he was a conceited ass who treated me like I was stupid and I never saw him again after the two week follow-up. How much Protein are you going for? I never came close to getting my protein goals and I have had less than 5 Protein shakes in the entire year and a half since I had the procedure. Have you tried drinking with a straw? That was the only way I could get enough Fluid in and if you use it with protein shakes it may help. Unfortunately, there is no way to reverse a sleeve procedure, however there are a lot of surgeons who specialize in the procedure and you can switch to a new doctor who is more patient-centered. If your surgery was done correctly, a good doctor can help you work through all of the issues you're facing and get you back on the path to recovery. Good luck!

@@Swampdoggie My butt is doing much better, thank-you for asking! My doctor did a fabulous job. I actually look pretty much the same in clothing, but without clothing I look SO much better. I've never been able to wear cute lingerie because even when I was thin as an adult, I've always had a lot of flab on my bottom half. Everything now is so tight and high looking, that I actually look kinda good in thongs and frilly underthings. I should have had more faith in my doctor- he really is a fantastic surgeon.