One Year Later

It sounds cliché, but I can’t believe it’s been a year since I had my tummy tuck. The worst memories of the recovery have faded, and so has my scar. I’m now back ship-shape around the middle, with no weakness or problems related to having the surgery.

First, was it worth it? Yes! When I think of the ‘before’ me, I was so miserable about the way I felt and looked. There were so many things I couldn’t do (ride on the swing or go down the slide with my son, do much in yoga class, hold my little girl, stand in one place for more than a few minutes) when my stomach muscles were separated. And I looked atrocious around the middle. Now I feel so strong and ‘back together’. It’s fantastic.

Was there a downside? Other than the icky early recovery (and the thousands of dollars that we just paid off), there was little downside.

I had a fantasy that I’d be slim and athletic post-surgery. I did a little too much couch surfing and chocolate munching, and put on fifteen pounds. Now I’m back at Weight Watchers trying to get those pounds off again (five down, ten to go!). Incidentally, I don’t put weight on in my tummy any more. That’s right, fifteen pounds and I still look like I have a flat middle. But I had to buy bra strap-extenders and I have a nice muffin-top to go with most of my jeans.

At my last visit to the surgeon, many months ago, she made some crack about me needing to get my boobs lifted. So I’d be more comfortable. Grrr. Half of me smiled politely, and the other half of me wanted to tell her that I’d feel a lot more comfortable if she pissed off. It’s weird, she had such a warm, fantastic bedside manner while I was shopping around. After the surgery, the warmth was gone and she was extremely abrupt. Ah, well, it's just business. But I still think she did a great job. I plan to keep my boobies the way they are, though!

I hope I have given you some insight into the tummy tuck recovery process. I wish you the very best in your journey. I'm sending some good karma your way, wherever you are!

With love,

Amy

Back to Normal at Ten Weeks

It was surprisingly difficult to give up the binder or Spanx during the day. I wore the Spanx for my whole first week back to work (enjoying a Spandex-enhanced figure). That weekend, I realized I'd have to go cold turkey.

Without support, it felt as though my middle wasn't strong enough to hold me upright. This feeling lasted for three days. Now I'm Spandex-free! And I'm no more hunched over than I was before the surgery. I even wore my shirt tucked in one day. I haven't done that since I was pregnant with my first child. No one noticed this 'milestone', but there was a parade, with confetti, going on in my head that day.

My next big task is to get back to being as active as I used to be. I really have to work on stamina. I dusted off my old Omicron pedometer and spent a week walking 10,000 steps a day. Oy. By Thursday, I was too exhausted after work to go to yoga class. My hubby didn't think I was awake enough to drive there. I also started swimming again. My city has a free water aerobics class. Nothing makes you feel better in a swimsuit than being 30-40 years younger than everyone else in the pool. After the class, I do a few laps, each lap followed by some brief gasping. The swimming has really helped me stretch out the abs.

Life is pretty much back to normal. I don't have another doctor's appointment for a month. My plastic surgeon will then take the 'after' photos. It's nice being an 'after', and not a 'before' for a change!

I hope I have given you lots of useful information for your journey. It's amazing how fast you can heal, but it won't seem that way for a few months. Pick yourself a fantastic surgeon, and take off as much time as you can. I wish you much success and love!

Good luck, Girl!
-Amy

7 Weeks and Counting

At 7-and-a-half weeks post surgery I can:

• fit into pre-surgery pants. Whoopie!
• wear Spanx instead of the binder. The joy of leaving off the binder is replaced within a few hours with an intense hatred of Spandex. I still use the binder far more than the Spanx.
• pick up my 28-pound daughter. Oh how I missed her snuggled into my neck while I held her! My son, at 38 pounds, is still too heavy for me.
• walk up and down hills for at least 30 minutes.
  
• shop mindlessly for several hours. The Macy's clerk said skeptically, "You tried on all those things and you only found one blouse?"
• lay on the bed, on my back or my tummy. This turned out to be a big deal. I had to work at straightening out every night.
• walk without hunching over. I still hunch a little after a big meal.

I have half a week more before I return to work. That day will be exactly eight weeks since the surgery. I'm sure I'll be utterly exhausted, being 'on' for so many hours. But I know I'm well enough to do my thing. I have come so far, so fast. I wish a speedy recovery for you, too.

I'll post again on returning to work. Keep on truckin'!

Surgical Drains, What Are They?

Even though my surgical drains have been out for over a month post-tummy tuck, I've been meaning to blog about them. Going into the surgery, I only had a vague idea about what the drains looked like or felt like.

When you take your first trip to the powder room post-surgery, you'll notice two tubes coming right out of your flesh in the upper pubic area. A woman I met who underwent a lower body lift mentioned that she had four drains after her surgery. Good Lord. Anyway, your 1/4" diameter tubes will be stitched in. Mine had about 18" of tubing that led to the drain, a large, clear soft plastic bulb (water balloon size). The bulbs have a valve at the top for emptying, and they will be safety-pinned to your binder. The safety pins prevent the heavy bulbs from pulling downward and yanking on your stitches.

With the tubes and bulbs, you will look like something out of Dr. Frankenstein's lab. Not surprisingly, the tubing hurts. After the first few days, when my painkiller started to wear off, it was the tubing sites that gave a nagging pain. Every time you move or shift, your body says, "Hey, there are a couple of holes that aren't supposed to be here and I don't like it!"

Draining the bulbs is easy, once you get over the initial shock of seeing bright red fluid in there. I emptied both bulbs into a plastic cup, and then dumped the contents in the toilet. When the bulbs are empty, you squeeze any air out of them and cap them off. This puts a little suction on the surgical site to help pull fluid out of you. The marks on the bulb read 100 mL, 75 mL, 50 mL, 25 mL. The first night, over 100 mL drained into the two bulbs. A week later, I was draining about 40 mL for a whole day.

At my one week appointment, the surgeon looked at my 'drain log', and said the fluid level was low enough that the drains could come out. Oh, Happy Day! She got her equipment ready, and I grabbed my husband's hand. The doc snipped the sutures holding in the tubes (OW), and then pulled out a good six inches of tubing from inside my body cavity (what a weird feeling). Then she did the second one. By all means, have someone's hand to hold during this procedure.

I was on top of the world after the drains came out. I kept saying that I couldn't believe it. The pain went down a whole bunch, and I was able to stop the pain medication the next day. The little holes leaked fluid for 24 hours. I was tempted to try a Depends, but I opted to stick a maxi pad horizontally at the top of my underwear. By the next morning, the leaking had stopped.

My surgeon recommended no shower until 24 hours after the drains were removed. I was scared to death, but I sure needed a shower. My hubby helped me get out of my clothes--it was the first time we had both seen my entire body after the surgery, and we were a little shocked. I feared passing out or falling. At the end of it though, I have to admit it was one of the five best showers of my life. Clean, and in fresh clothes, I plopped on that recliner and napped for hours. Ahh, you always remember your first shower.

All in all, the drains are awful but necessary. They do come out pretty soon. And it's absolutely glorious when they do.

Take care!

One Month After Surgery

It's been four weeks since the surgery. These days I can walk around the block three times, or do a quarter of a yoga class. I'm not in any pain. There is some tightness in my middle when I lie down on my back, and I can't yet lie down flat with legs straight. I still wear the binder all day, but I take it off for sleeping. My stamina is nowhere near where it used to be, but I can cook and serve dinner, and put the little ones to bed. My daughter thinks it's cool that she can climb onto a folding chair and hoist herself into the crib. Oddly, my two-year-old saw my scar in the bathroom, so my three-year-old insisted that he get to see it too. Now they routinely ask Mommy if they can see the owie. They now understand why they can't elbow Mommy in the tummy.

If I focus on what I can do, I feel pretty good about where I am in the recovery. I think I could work now, especially if I sat more than usual on the job. I still have a few more weeks off, and I'm really grateful for that. I'm still a bit hunched and swollen. I could potentially squeeze into my pants using Spanx and pliers. I think I'll stick with the stretchy pants for awhile.

Finally, here's the million dollar question: Was it worth it? I answer with a qualified yes. I'm glad my muscles were repaired. I'm glad that my skin fits now. But I'll be really happy when I can be something other than a couch potato for most of the day. Life goes on.

Good luck to you!

Tummy Tuck Pills

My plastic surgeon sent home an information packet when I scheduled my surgery. She recommended that I reduce vitamin E supplements (though the amount in a multivitamin is okay), and increase vitamin C and B complex. I started taking extra C in addition to the usual supplements I take. The surgeon was especially concerned about plant extracts and Chinese medicine supplements, because those can contain all kinds of unknown compounds.

Two weeks before the surgery, I picked up my prescriptions: Erythromycin for fighting infection, Darvocet for pain, Ambien for sleeping, and Phenergan for nausea. I also picked up a bottle of Dulcolax stool softener. When I got home from the surgery, I took an Erythromycin and a Darvocet right away. I was warned not to take the Phenergan on an empty stomach, so I waited to take that one. I tolerated all the pills well, except for the nausea drug. And I didn't take vitamins for a few days post-surgery, until I started eating again.

From what I understand, Darvocet is a relatively mild narcotic. The doc said that it's less potent than Vicodin, but it also has fewer side effects. I had some Vicodin left over from my c-section, so I felt like I had a backup plan in case the Darvocet wasn't strong enough. There were only a couple of times I wished I has something stronger than the Darvocet, but it wasn't bad enough for me to break into my bottle of Vicodin. For the first five days, I took a Darvocet every four hours around the clock. I worried that I wasn't able to let more time pass between doses, but I just felt like I needed it. By day 5, I was able to go an extra half hour or hour between doses, and around day 8, I was off the sauce entirely. The biggest impetus to get off the pills was that I wanted to drive. I'm amazed that my body was pretty much pain-free such a short time after major surgery. Way to go, bod!

I tried the Ambien a couple of nights before the surgery, and it seemed gentle and effective. I continued to take the sleeping pills for two weeks after surgery. They seemed to work best while I was taking the narcotics! At the two week mark, I hit a night where it took me three hours to fall asleep after taking an Ambien. I realized I would have to either up the dosage or give it up, so I gave it up that night. As it warned on the package insert, I had a fierce case of insomnia on the next night, but after that I slept more or less okay. I still woke up three or four times a night to roll over for awhile, but that eased as the days progressed.

I mentioned in a previous post that I had a horrible (and apparently rare) reaction to the nausea drug Phenergan--extreme vertigo. I wish I had taken a sample dose before the surgery so that the doc could have given me a different prescription. Thankfully, I only had a little nausea in my recovery.

Now let's talk about my pal, the stool softener. I started taking one per night on the second night. Things are rather sluggish in that department for the first few days. On the morning of day 4 post-surgery, the Dulcolax kicked in. It was a glorious moment, indeed! As the anesthesiologist told me, you can't start taking a stool softener too early. After a week, I felt like I could go without it. No pun intended.

Before surgery, ask you doctor if you can give some of your prescriptions a test run (not the antibiotics, but the others). After surgery, be sure to write down the times you take your meds. You'll be in the twilight zone for a few days, and it will comfort you to know when you can take your next dose. And give yourself at least a week before you start obsessing about addiction. Most people can take these drugs for a couple of weeks without a problem. But if you suspect a problem, talk to the doctor right away.

Happy Healing!

Lining Up Help

Your first few days after surgery, you're going to be completely dependent on others. Since you probably can't afford round-the-clock nursing staff, you'd better be really nice to your family and friends!

I have two adorable and needy children, and one wonderful husband. Luckily, my parents offered to fly across the country and help us for the first week post-surgery. My folks and my hubby took turns watching the kids or watching me. That was amazing, and it helped everyone keep their sanity. Let's just say that, at times, I was a teensy bit stressed.

Let me just tell you an anecdote from day 2. I was installed in my recliner, full of darvocet but none too comfortable. That was the day I felt panicky, probably from low blood sugar (but at the time I thought I was losing my marbles). My parents arrived for their 'shift', and I overheard my husband ask my folks if they would keep my two-year-old daughter at home with me while he took out my three-year-old son. My radar mommy-hearing was particularly acute that day. So I yelled for my husband to please take both kids. I needed peace and quiet more than anything else. He yelled back that he had agreed to watch three nephews at the same time, and he couldn't watch all five kids at once. Ultimately I pulled the surgery trump card, and he left with the kids. The house was quiet. I started to relax. My Mom came in and spoke softly to me until I drifted off to sleep, and I felt a whole lot better when I woke up.

Don't get me wrong, I love my kids fiercely. It ate me up that I couldn't run around and play with them. But I had to have peace, quiet, and special attention to heal at the beginning. We mommies find it particularly difficult to accept help. Whatever you do, make sure you line up a whole bunch of assistance. In a few weeks, you'll be giving those baths and dishing up those Cheerios again.

I have a big shout out for my Mom and Dad--I can't begin to thank you for everything you did for us. Thank you to my favorite Aunt and my Cousin for coming over. And hubby, you are amazing. Thank you for being so supportive. Thank you for holding my hand at the doctor's, and for being there in every way. Finally, extra thanks and kisses to my babies. Thank you for helping Mommy, for giving lots of hugs, and for understanding that Mommy has an 'owie'.