SkinnyKathy

Kirsten, I also can't wait to see the girls after I get all this work done! I can't remember the last time my boobs didn't point straight down at the ground! I'm prepared to see bruising and swelling. I know it is just temporary and will go down in time. Congrats on your surgery success!

Kirsten, my surgery is day after tomorrow. I had to push it out a week because there was an event this past weekend that I needed to be at. So I am in the final countdown now! I've rented a 3-position recliner/lift chair and borrowed a walker, toilet seat riser, shower chair, and portable hospital-type table. I'm setting up a little recovery cave in the living room for me with my chair, pillows, laptop, phone, etc. I'm doing all the final runaround and getting all the laundry done and everything else that I can do now to make the stress of managing the family less on my husband in the weeks following my surgery when I am recovering.

One week from today, August 1, I am going in for extended tummy tuck with anchor incision, mons lift, breast lift with implants, arm lift, and lipo on the thighs. I am wondering what I can do now to help with a smoother recovery. I've rented a lift chair/recliner, and will be borrowing a walker, toilet seat extension, and over the chair adjustable table. Ive got my prescriptions for meds and will fill those soon. Any other recommendations?

Just a quick update... I can't believe my surgery is less than a week away! Due to stress eating and a loose band, my weight is up by about 15 pounds from my lowest... Not where I wanted to be but right now it is what it is. After surgery and recovery I will have my band re-tightened and get back seriously into diet and exercise.

Great suggestions, thank you. I do have a heating pad, I will have to put that near my aftercare station. Ditto for old t-shirts. As for binders, did you buy those ahead of time? I don't have any instructions from my surgeon on this. I guess I will have to ask.

Sue, thank you for the suggestions. I love the idea of PJs with pockets. I just ordered some. As for Vitamin C, my surgeon told me to stop taking ALL supplements two weeks before surgery. Did your surgeon allow you to take Vitamin C?

OK, thanks for the clarification. Will you have all the remaining areas addressed in a single surgery? I am getting: (1) extended tummy tuck with anchor incision, mons lift, arms, breast lift with implants, thigh lip - all on August 1 (2) back and buttocks lift, medial thigh lift - future surgery to be scheduled I want to get it all over with as quickly as I can!

I had my pre-op appointment today, and everything looks on track! Doctor took a bunch of pictures, and we decided on 450 cc implants. Doc estimates that I only have about 150 cc of actual breast tissue left (most of what is filling my bra at the moment is skin!) so that plus a 450 cc implants will give me a full D cup, which is what I want. I also added a mons lift to the surgery. For some reason, my mons has remained pouffy even with all the weight I have lost. It's kind of unfair, I lost all the weight off the girls and seemingly little down there LOL! I didn't want to end up like some pictures I've seen where the tummy is flat but the mons area poufs out. Just a little less than a month left to go!

Thanks! The bulge on your upper thigh, is that from the surgery? Also, how will a lower body lift differ from this?

How is that similar to or different from a lower body lift with anchor incision? Do you have a horizontal incision as well as vertical or only vertical? I will be getting both horizontal and vertical incisions in my surgery on August 1.

Well, to keep you all updated, I had to change my surgery date from July 24 to August 1 due to a personal schedule conflict, but other than that, everything is still on track! I'm getting excited! I went on vacation to Cabo San Lucas with my hubby and kids last week at one of those all-inclusive resorts... Ugh, not good for the diet! Too many sweet drinks and desserts which go down past the band juuuust fine. So I am up a few pounds, trying to get serious about losing it before surgery, but I want to make sure to maintain excellent nutritional status too. Protein, veggies, some fruit. Bacon-wrapped scallops for dinner, plus vegetable juice! Yum!

In my case my weight came off everywhere but more in some areas and less in others. For example, my "girls" lost significant volume almost immediately, I went from a G cup to a D cup pretty quickly. Whereas my mons (pubic region) doesn't seem to want to let go of it! I hate being fat there and so when I have cosmetic surgery next month he is going to do some lipo on the mons area in addition to my thighs. Plus extended tummy tuck and breast lift with implants plus arm lift... and that's just surgery #1.

Not in my case this time. I actually had a panniculectomy after I had lost about 80 pounds due to severe and worsening rashes. (See my full story in my profile.) Insurance covered that. The rest of this is cosmetic so I have to pay out of pocket.

My story is posted on my profile, feel free to read it. In short, my best advice is to actively manage your band. Being either too loose or too tight (really!) will slow down your progress. Keep the faith, make good food choices, and find some kind of exercise that you enjoy. :-)

Hi all! I've lost 248 pounds since my lap band in September 2008. I am now 5 pounds away from my goal weight, and I am consulting with various local and non-local plastic surgeons about my plastic surgery options. As you can imagine, after losing so much weight I have a lot of skin laxity in BOTH directions, particularly on my abdomen. I definitely need a lower body lift (as opposed to a tummy tuck), but the question is whether or not to have the fleur-de-lis or anchor incision with it. This is a vertical incision down the center of my abdomen, which would allow the surgeon to pull the skin tight from the sides as well as up/down. That is the main advantage of it. The main disadvantage is the vertical scar down your abdomen from lower chest to lower tummy. It would show in any kind of bikini, crop top, halter top, etc. Most surgeons have told me that the only way to give me satisfactory results is to do this vertical incision. But one plastic surgeon, Dr. Agha in LA (he does a lot of body lifts) told me that he could give me a good result without the vertical incision. I'm not sure who to believe. I would like to hear from people who have had to confront this issue because they had a lot of skin laxity, whether they chose to have the vertical incision or not. Why did you make the decision you did? Did you ever regret it? If you did get the vertical incision, how visible is the scar? Does it prevent you from showing your belly in public? If you did not get the vertical incision, does your belly look "funny"? Does it look poof out like you're pregnant? (I have heard this can be a problem) With much trepidation, I am attaching a nekkid picture of my mid-section, with the naughty parts redacted. So you can see what I'm dealing with here. As a point of clarification, I had a panniculectomy after I had lost 80 pounds, so that's why my pannus isn't as bad as it would be otherwise. It's a secondary pannus LOL! Thanks!

Floridays, you look amazing! You are one of my inspirations! I'm not quite at goal yet, but getting close, and I had a similar moment to you just the other day. I was dressed in my exercise pants which are quite form fitting (holds in the loose skin so I can exercise more easily) and I noticed in the mirror that little gap at the top of my thighs even with my legs together. I have never had that little air space between my legs! It's only at the top of my thighs, but still it was a huge moment for me! Congratulations on your weight loss and happy (belated) birthday! Kathy

Sue, THANK YOU so much for sharing that! That was exactly what I needed to know. My stomach looks like yours, only worse, at the start, and so I think the T-incision is the way to go for me, too. I was just afraid of that scar but yours look decent at 12 weeks and almost invisible at 2 years! Did you have a tummy tuck or lower body lift? Who was your surgeon? Did you go to someone local? How was your recovery? Thanks for the tips also on leaving on the surgical tape. I will definitely do that. If I end up with a tummy looking like yours I wouldn't hesitate to wear a tummy-bearing top or a bikini! My first bikini since about 7th grade! Whoo hoo! Kathy

I was banded in September 2008. My starting weight was 433 lbs. Even at 5' 9", my BMI was over 60. I was wearing size 34-36 clothes, and they were tight. If I gained any more weight I would have to wear mumus! Before my decision to get the lap band, I thought I would never be able to lose the weight and I would die morbidly obese. When my sister-in-law was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I thought of her children growing up without a mom, it made me realize that my children could easily face the same fate. So I vowed to do something about it. I chose the lap band because it is reversible and adjustable. I knew that I am young enough that if a better bariatric technique comes along I want to be able to take advantage of that. Whereas if I had a gastric bypass I might not be able to do so, since part of my stomach and/or intestines would be cut away. I had to wait 6 months from the time I made the decision to the surgery date. Waiting was hard, but it gave me time to prepare and get other health issues (undiagnosed Type II diabetes, high blood pressure) under control with medications. My lap band surgery went smoothly, and recovery was not difficult. Afterwards, sticking with the liquid diet for several weeks afterwards was a challenge. And waiting four weeks for the first fill, and two weeks in between fills, and four fills before I got to my sweet spot was a BIG challenge. I was so anxious to get the weight loss going, that it was hard to wait so long to get this tool in my hands after I had made the decision to do it. The nutritionist I met with before my surgery told me that the lap band is not a panacea, it doesn't do the work for you, but it gives you a great tool for you to use. It's like I had been trying all my life to dig a hole with a teaspoon. I got frustrated and gave up, who wouldn't? Getting the lap band is like trading in your teaspoon for a backhoe. I still have to do the work, but now I have a great tool for the job. I found this analogy to be extremely true in my case. Once I got to my fourth fill, and the lap band really started working for me, then the weight really came off. Although the rate fluctuated, over time my weight loss was a pretty consistent 2 pounds per week. Basically, I lost 200 pounds in the first two years. Those were two years of amazing changes in my life. I did a lot of work on the inside as well as the outside to get to know myself better and learn to love myself and accept myself, faults and all, even as I strive to make myself a better version of me. I did a lot of exploration, pushed a lot of personal boundaries, and even changed careers. I do believe that this internal work is a critical part of the weight loss journey for anyone, in order to be successful in the long run. Backing up a little bit, I had a pretty severe pannus even before I started losing weight. Once my weight loss got going, all my health issues got better (Type II diabetes and blood pressure came under control without medication) but the rashes under my pannus got worse! As I lost weight my pannus kept dropping lower and lower! Finally I sought out a plastic surgeon and we got insurance to cover a panniculectomy. He cut off 14 pounds of skin and fat! I had lost about 80 pounds by this point, so we knew that the band was working for me. The recovery from the panniculectomy was initially easy, but later I developed some pretty severe seromas, that required my surgeon to go in and pull Fluid out several times a week. But after the first month I was very glad I had the panniculectomy. No more rashes, clothes fit me better, and it was a lot easier to exercise! I have to admit, though, that I did not exercise regularly at first. I'm not proud to admit it, but most of that 200 pounds lost was through diet rather than exercise. After losing 200 pounds my weight loss stalled. I spent about a year and a half between 220-230 lbs, wearing a size 18-20W. At this point my life was already transformed, I had already achieved and exceeded the goals that my doctor and I set out for myself (my initial goal was to get into the "low 200s" which I later defined as 249 lbs.) and I thought that was all the weight loss there was for me. I was satisfied, but I still longed to go lower, to get out of plus sizes, and to be eligible to have a full set of plastic surgery procedures to transform me into the beautiful woman that I felt myself to be inside. I set a new goal, 199 pounds. So a little over a year ago I finally decided to get serious about losing the extra weight. First of all, I went in to have my band tightened. I discovered that my band wasn't holding a fill very well. After a series of tests, my doctor discovered that I had a leaky port, and I went in for port replacement surgery. That surgery was a piece of cake, and after I got my port and tubing (it was actually leaky tubing) replaced my band worked as good as new. So getting a properly working, properly adjusted band was the first step towards getting back on track. The other thing I had to do was get serious about exercise. All my life I had hated exercise, and had only ever done it out of obligation or guilt. But some friends were raving about a small yoga class, including one friend who also struggles with weight and body image issues, and I thought going to yoga with friends would be more fun and make it easier to stick with it. I struggled mightily with voices of self-doubt at first, but eventually I really started getting into yoga. At first I was going only once a week, then twice a week, and now I am going five days a week M-F. Now I love yoga! I have learned so much about myself as well as greatly increased my strength and flexibility through yoga. I can't recommend yoga highly enough. I only wish I had gotten into it sooner. Oh, and weight loss! In the last year I have lost another 50 pounds or so. As of this writing (2/25/2013) my weight is 185 (size 14-16), making my total weight loss 248 pounds. My current goal is to get down to 180, then have plastic surgery. I figure that will take me down into the 160s. Currently I am consulting with plastic surgeons in my local area (San Jose, CA) as well a few in Los Angeles, CA and Tijuana, Mexico. I am looking to have a lower body lift (probably with fleur-de-lis/anchor incision), liposuction, breast lift with implants, brachioplasty, and medial thigh lift. I still working out how I will pay for all of this, as well as find the time for these multiple surgeries and the recoveries from each. But it is a priority for me! I have been more than thrilled with my weight loss journey. The lap band has been an incredible tool for me to help me achieve my goals. I wish everyone similar success in their weight loss journeys. Before lap band: After lap band (I've actually lost more weight since this picture was taken. I'm not HOLDING my old jeans, I'm WEARING them!):

Thanks, all. And I never took any disrespect from tmf's message to me. I tried to fix the message title but I can't seem to edit that, only the body of the message. So my error will have to stand for now. Anyways, it doesn't invalidate a 248 pound weight loss! Positive energy to you all! Kathy

Karen, did I read correctly that you went to Cosmed for one of your earlier surgeries? Is that correct, and if so, why did you not go back to Cosmed for the later surgeries? I am strongly considering them and would appreciate any feedback. Thanks! Kathy

LOL about the up-side-down picture. I admit, I did have to look at it for quite a while before figuring it out.

Karen, thank you for your reply. Are you happy with your look overall? Would you do it the same way again if you could do it all over and money was no object? Thanks, Kathy