Plastic Surgery: Why I Love It & Why I Won't Do It Again (Part 2)

This is a continuation of a previous post:
WARNING: GRAPHIC PRE- AND POST-OP PHOTOS

Fast-forward about 3 years from my first plastic surgery to my gastric bypass surgery. I will write more about that experience in future posts, and you can scroll back in my archives to read my thoughts as I was recovering from that surgery. I was advised to wait about 18 months after the gastric bypass to have any plastic surgery procedures. This was in order to give my weight loss time to stabilize. So at about 15 months post-op, I went back to Dr. Lucas and said I want to get some of this flabby loose skin taken off from all the weight loss. He was as kind and helpful as ever - except he advised that I actually needed THREE surgeries to whip me into shape. The first procedure he recommends to all his post-gastric bypass patients is the lower body lift with tummy tuck. This procedure would basically cut me all the way around, like a belt, and pull up the lower body skin, pull down the upper body skin and cut out any excess in between. Sounded great to me. Sign me up, I said. It's a 7-8 hour surgery, he said. You'll need 2-3 weeks off work to recover. Well, I've got 10 days, I said, but I'm a trooper, let's do it anyway.
Meanwhile, as I waited for my surgery date to approach I saved my money (none of my plastics procedures were covered by health insurance),
So my big surgery day approached and I couldn't wait. Until about 2 days beforehand, when I started to panic and second-guess my decision. A lady on the surgery message boards that I followed actually DIED after her surgery, and that scared me. The morning of surgery, Mom was in the pre-op room with me and I was crying, saying I wasn't sure. Mom said, "It's not too late to put your clothes back on and walk out of here." But I didn't. I stayed. She was there with me at 5:30 that morning (and so was her boyfriend, Richard). Artie had to drop Logan off at school before he could join us.
I know you want to see pictures, and they are quite embarrassing. I have tried to crop out any private areas and still give you an idea of the procedure and results. These are my pre-op markup photos. The areas with magic marker are his cut marks. The green slashes are where he is removing the area entirely. I cannot believe I am putting these on the internet, BUT when I was researching my surgeries, I wanted to see exactly what I was in for!
Pre-op:

Still here? If you haven't passed out yet or thrown up, the story continues.
So I had my surgery, I survived by the grace of God, and I went home THAT SAME DAY, late in the evening. I had prepared by buying a lift chair at the advice of many of my surgery board friends. They advised I would not be able to get up and down on my own for a couple of weeks. This is a photo of Hannah, one of my nieces, playing in the lift chair.

I had my surgery on a Friday and had the whole next week off from work. I was in a pain medicine haze and thankfully had Artie home with me most of that week. Mom came and stayed with me when Artie had to work. It was an awful week. I was in a lot of pain, and took so much pain medicine that I started to hallucinate. I kept telling Lucy to get off of me when she was actually being boarded at the kennel that week and wasn't even here! I would wake up and not know where I was. This may have been in part because I had to sleep in that chair for 2-3 weeks. When I returned to work 10 days later, I could barely move. I wasn't supposed to be driving at all yet. (I did stop taking any pain meds before driving!) I somehow struggled through that week, but left early most days (against my boss' wishes). I was miserable and very emotional, crying and sad, regretting the surgery. I loved my new flatter stomach and how much weight-loss flabby skin was gone, but it was still a VERY MAJOR operation. I did not take nearly enough time off work, but that is unfortunately the nature of my job running a small law firm. When I am not at work there is no one to fill in for me or do my job. So these photos are about one week post-op and I am still quite swollen, but you can see a partial result.

Just when I thought I might be feeling better, part of my incision started to open up. To make a long story short, it became a large open wound, became infected several times, and still today, 5 months post-op, I have a small wound about the size of a pencil eraser that bleeds some days and drains clear fluid other days. And it is right where my waistband goes for pants, skirts, etc. Very uncomfortable and inconvenient. This is the wound at its largest and most painful:

So even though I now have a flat stomach, although I will never be "skinny" in this lifetime, and am wearing clothes 10-12 sizes smaller than I did before my gastric bypass and lower body lift, I would not do the lower body lift again. It was a major surgery and I couldn't take enough time off work to recover; therefore part of my wound opened up and became infected, and I spent months working and living with an open, infected wound. It drained me physically and emotionally, and in retrospect having a round belly wasn't as bad as I thought it was.

I'm sorry if this post grosses you out, or if you think I have humiliated myself with these photos. I want this blog to be honest and forthcoming, to share my experiences with you as best I can, and this was definitely a major part of the last year of my life. Thank God for bringing me through it and surrounding me with a loving family to see me through it. I love what plastic surgery can do for your body - it can make an amazing change in just a few hours. But I would not do it again. The other two parts of my three-part surgery plan will not be taking place. I still love Dr. Lucas and his staff. I am just done. For me, the plastic surgery ride is over.