That's so good to hear! Did Dr. Michaels use the flap of fat from your lower back or the fat injections from lipo'ed fat? Mine uses the liquid fat from lipo...

I rented a lift chair and slept in it week one. I was working from home week 2 and sleeping in my own bed. Week one was brutal, week two is manageable with no pain killers. Plan to go back to the office mid week, next week. (Week 3).

eveyone is different, I am a quick healer, have high pain tolerance. I recovered quicker than most from rny.

Sounds like you are doing so well. I just had my staples out yesterday. My belly button is crusty so was lectured to keep it cleaner. Cleaning every day but the scab will not come off.

Be grateful for the numbness, my feeling in my outer thighs came back around day 5 and was replaced by a pin *****ed feeling for 2 days and now they feel like they are on fire since then. That is what keeps me up at night, hoping it resolves soon.

I have had serious swelling. I went in at around 135 and was up to 147 3 days post op. Now at 2 weeks post op my weight is down to 135 (they removed 2.5lbs). Still very swollen and have gained at least 2 pant sizes. Looks like I?ll be in leggings for the next month or so. Can wait to be able to wear regular clothes and see my waist again.

I would also kill to have a bath...I think my first post op question was ?when can I have a bath??

Hi Cecily,

I had the fat transfer into my butt and I LOVE it. Totally not Kardashian at all, but as my surgeon pointed out to me, once he does the incision and pulls your back skin down and your butt skin up, I would be flat as a board. He used my own fat and gave me a nice little booty. I'm thrilled with it. This is me last week (I am in the black pants) and you can see there is a natural curve there, but nothing crazy!

so I did a consult today with Dr. Daniel Krochmal in Northbrook, IL. He focuses mostly (but not exclusively) on body contouring, and he did his fellowship with Joseph Hunstad in Charlotte, NC, who is pretty well-regarded for body contouring for massive weight loss patients. Since I don't really want to travel too far from home for this (I just don't want to be away for 2-3 weeks), I think he might be a good option.

Really clicked with him - he's a very personable guy and very professional. His plan for me wasn't something that would have occurred to me, though. I was thinking LBL, BL, and arm lift. I was a very apple-shaped person - most of my weight was in my chest, arms, stomach, and back. Even at my heaviest, my hips and thighs were never a problem. He noticed this right away. He pointed out that almost all of my loose skin is in my arms, upper torso, abs, and back. He wants to do an extended TT with a fleur de lis cut (which I can totally see since I have a lot of loose skin high up on my torso, which would be hard to get to without doing a fleur de lis), but instead of doing an LBL, he thinks I'd be happier with a bra-line back lift. His rationale is my hips and butt don't need much of a lift, but I have a lot of loose skin on my back and sides that the bra-line back lift would hit. It would also give a slight lift to my hips and butt, which is really all I'd need there, if anything, because they really aren't bad.

he agreed with the BL and arm lift (he thinks I might want to consider implants since I have very little body fat to play around with, but he thought I should get the torso work and breast lift done first before deciding on implants, because I might be OK with everything after those are done and decide not to do implants (which I'm not sure I would want *anyway*, unless I look way out of proportion without them)

Anyway, I left there thinking "this is the guy", but I'd like to do a couple more consults to see what they say. Again, the bra-line backlift rather than a LBL kind of threw me - I totally get what he was saying, but I want to see if other surgeons suggest that as well....and what other kinds of ideas they come up with.

His fees were about what I expected. I was thinking that since he's in the Chicago area, it would be really expensive, but not really...

He doesn't like to have people under for more than six hours (plus that's sort of his own limit to boot), so he'd do the TT and backlift during the first surgery, and the BL and arm lift during a second surgery.

I think I might set up a consult with David Shifrin (also in Chicago and also did his fellowship under Hunstad) and someone in Minneapolis who's done a lot of these - and also the residency program at the Univ of Chicago (one of their faculty members, whom I'm assuming would be the supervising surgeon, specializes in contouring for massive weight loss patients - but of course, I'll ask!)