My First Fill aka Torture Tactics for the Creatively-Minded (LONG)

pashmina · October 5, 2007

WARNING- This is long, and I can be a bit of a baby...ok, I'm a baby. Enjoy.

Perhaps there are those out there whose fills go smooth and perfect with just a little stick and you're out the door five minutes later. In fact, I know you evil people (kidding!) are out there because I see your posts all over telling would-be bandsters "nothing to worry", and "quick and painless." You're probably the same wenches (again, kidding!) who were up mall-walking the day after surgery. This is my fair* way of saying in advance that not everyone has trauma from their fills.

Such was not to be for my first fill experience.

If, before it is shutdown by government mandate, Gitmo is looking for new and unusual torture practices to try out on the politically criminal, they might consult a bariatric center or two.

I requested lidocaine, which my very kind, very humble, very amiable surgeon (I LOVE him and his practice, NOT the procedure) happily complied with. A few stingy pokes and I thought the worst was over. Ohhhh silly, naive little girl.

"Now," he tells me, "I'm just going to look for it first," and proceeds to ask me to act as if I am doing a very hard crunch and hold it. Am I the only one in the room who finds it a tad ironic that I'm being asked to do something that if I could do it reasonably well I wouldn't have needed the surgery in the first place? Hahaha...I laugh in the face of ubsurd obstacles.

I put my hands behind my head like my old personal trainer taught me and proceed to push upward, straining in my out-of-shapedness. Then the poking, jabbing, and otherwise painfully prodding fingers re-ignite every sensitivity in my port site that had slowly dissipated over the course of seven weeks and I feel as if I've got a hammer being swung at internal bruises. OMG it hurts!!! Then I'm huffing, and puffing, and sweat is pouring off my face.

He tells me to relax (meanwhile my "happy place" has turned into the portal to hell's fiery pits and I want nothing more than to get off the table) when he walks over to pick up the real needle, the fill needle. And I kid you not, this thing was a good 3 inches long. It has to be, after all, to get through all the fat in front of the port...but my GOD I wish I hadn't seen it.

I'm closing my eyes again, looking for happy place #2 (an x-rated area I can't quite share here) and focusing on keeping my half-assed sit up in place, jutting my tummy out as much as I can...POKE, JAB, STICK. I open my eyes and I have a Pulp Fiction moment...you know...where Uma Thurman wakes up from her overdose to see a plunger sticking out of her chest? Yeah, I had that, but in my stomach. Then there's more burning, more poking, and just when I think he's got it, he's telling me to relax and pulling the needle out, waiting to try again.

This went on for a good 30 minutes. Huff, puff, sweat, poke...until finally, one INTENSE sting later the needle was in the port and I was getting filled with saline, 2 cc's worth. (THAT'S IT?)

I sit here now with a very throbby, very tender port site...filled to 2cc's, thinking about two weeks from now when I get to do it again. Really? Again? Gee!

I repeat my manta...this will all be worth it, this will all be worth it, this will all be worth it. The scale (the big ugly metal kind at the MD office that looks as if it was intended for cattle) was down 3 pounds from last week. Maybe I should listen to myself.