AMAZING transformation thru RNY and Body Contouring Plastic Surgery - from 24W to size 4!...

Wow!

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you mind sharing what your current measurements are?  It is hard to get perspective from just body photos.  Does that make sense?

I am surprised that you lost 36 pounds with plastic surgery.  I had a panniculectomy, tummy tuck, mons lift, and brachioplasty, and I lost only 10 pounds (and my panni was huge -- hanging down into my thighs -- but was all skin). 

ETA: nevermind my comment about the weight... I just noticed that you had a liter of fat removed with lipo.  That explains the weight.  I left my original comment because I don't want people to think it is common to lose that much from plastic surgery (but its great for you!)

Lora

1 liter of fat = ~2 pounds, and my surgeon removed 11 pounds of skin/fat. The muscle tightening made it so that I could not eat that much. It felt like it renewed the restriction of my pouch (remember that I am 10 years out form RNY). Someone else who was far out from her RNY told me the same thing happened to her. I am 9-mos out from my muscle tightening (from the tummy tuck) and I still cannot eat all that much, like I did before my TT. And I took full advantage of this opportunity by tightening up my diet and recently I joined a gym. Also the ASPS released a study that shows increased satiety after a tummy tuck owing to the hunger hormones being removed with the fat in the body. They found that the more fat removed the more the patients felt satisfied eating less after the tummy tuck. 

BUT I feel like I hit the jackpot with this surgeon!

Here are my stats at 3-mos post-operative
Bust w/o bra, standing: 41.5
Bust w/o bra and bent over: 44
Chest beneath breast: 36
Waist: 32
Lower abdo: 35
Hips: 38.5
Thighs: 21.75
Knee top: 16.5
Arms upper: 12
Arms above elbow: 11
Weight 162
Size 4 jeans, size XS and S shirts

Thanks for clarifying where the additional weight loss came from.  Some people have gone into plastic surgery expecting huge weight loss just from skin removal and been disappoint when they didn't lose two pants sizes or whatever.  I wish I had felt more restriction after my tummy tuck, but I didn't except for the first couple of weeks when I had a lot of swelling.

Your bust, waist and hip measurements are pretty close to mine, but I'm shorter than you are (not quite 5'4") and weigh about 145, but I wear size 10 jeans. (I cannot measure my breasts without a bra on, though, because they hang to my waist, LOL! Still wearing a 36DDD bra, though (all natural)).

You look great and can be proud of your accomplishments!

Lora

Thank you! I remember you from the plastic surgery forum.

Plastic surgery is not a weight loss surgery, but you will go down a few sizes just getting that fat cut off. Fat and skin don't really weigh that much but do create a lot of bulk and volume. I asked Dr. Capella about my results - I thought they were kind of extraordinary -- but he said I am a typical patient. I just looked at his photo gallery again tonihgt and there really are some amazing transformations. So am I extraordinary or is he the one who is extraordinary? I know that not every PS could have given me a body like this. 

BTW I am 5'7" and it depends on how tight you wear your jeans and what brand you buy. The other day I bought my first pair of skinny jeans at Abercrombie & Fitch -- you know the store that only makes clothes up to a size 10 and cuts them extra tight so that you have to go up at least a size! I got a size 6 in the "destroyed style." 

Yes, I agree that if they are cutting off skin and fat, people will go down sizes,  but skin alone, without fat attached, not only weighs very little but doesn't add a lot of bulk.  

The plastic surgeon I used for everything except the panniculectomy stressed the importance of being at a stable weight for abdominal work and that the results would be better if we lost as much of the excess weight as possible if we didn't want to include liposuction and contouring.  The "brutality" of lipo makes me cringe so I didn't want to undergo the pain of that.  (I do now wish I had paid for him to at least remove the two little blobs of residual fat that are on both sides (but not on my belly or on my back) just above my waist, but after I watched the way they jab that thing into people's bodies, and was going to have to spend an additional $700 for just those two small spots, I didn't.)

When I had my arms done, there was still some residual fat attached to them, and since I had been buying some blouses to fit my arms rather than my ample chest, it did change my blouse size in some cases.  When I had my panniculectomy, though, even though it hung down over several inches of the tops of my thighs, it was almost all just skin and the underlying tissue and it was only 6 pounds. I didn't change pants size; the size I was already wearing was just more comfortable.

Yes, I think that the skill of the plastic surgeon makes a LOT of difference (as does adding contouring in addition to skin removal). My tummy looks better than some I have seen but not as nice as others (even if you ignore the scarring from the necrosis). 

Lora

Like you, I am not a fan of lipo. It is very brutal to the body and there seems to be higher risk than with excising skin. I did not have lipo on my abdo, my surgeon excises the skin and fat there. I had lipo on my hips, thighs, and arms, in addition to the skin being excised (and I guess some fat, too???). 

Also like you I had 6 pounds removed during my tummy tuck. But I am surprised that you did not go down in pants size. I say this because when I spoke to Dr. Capella about my inner thigh lift, he said it was not fat that it was skin (I assume he means mostly skin - obviously there is underlying fat). In my case it did add a lot of bulk and I though that was true for everyone. I would think that with my TT there was a lot of fat removed, judging by the way I look in the before photo there seems to be a lot of fat under the skin.

I did not know that you had skin necrosis. I had a superficial skin necrosis on my right arm after the lift. It looked ugly! But it was not a big deal and it healed quite nicely. The scar is very small compared to what the wound was, but I think a small revision to the scar will be needed. Again, not a big deal as my surgeon does it in his office at no charge.

i am curious about your necrosis. How bad was it and what caused it? I do not run across many people who have had this and the others who did had deep,wounds. Dr. Capella said that my case was very unusual (my words not his). He said it was more of a sloughing off of cells than a true necrosis. How did you treat your wound? Have you considered scar revision?

thanks for the good discussion,  Lora!

My necrosis was pretty significant.  My tummy tuck was a "reverse TT"  because I had already had the panniculectomy, so it was a true "T" shape with the top running along under my breasts.  I had open RNY, then had an incisional hernia repaired using the same midline incision, and THEN had the tummy tuck. Both my plastic surgeon and my gastric bypass surgeon said it was a result of cumulative compromised bloodflow to the skin in that area because of all of the cutting.

A couple of days after my surgery the midline incision started to turn black and I had the first of several debridements to cut out the necrotic skin and tissue. It quickly spread to the rest of the incision. I went in (an hour's drive from home) about every 4 days for a couple of weeks. The smell from the dead tissue was absolutely disgusting! But the time we were done, I had a large triangular wound on my belly that, at the deepest part was all the way down to the muscle fascia, and had less deep wounds the length of the horizontal part of the incision under my breasts.  Looked a little like a uterus, Fallopian tubes, and ovaries,

I had to clean and then pack it with a saline soaked gauze layer covered by several dry layers of gauze (to absorb the oozing) and lots of tape twice a day for five months.  It was disgusting looking, and I got so upset every time i looked at it, that I ended up with a prescription for Ativan that I took before each of the cleaning/packing sessions for the first month.  At one point, I had my RNY surgeon look at it (because it was healing so slowly, but the plastic surgeon said a wound vac wasn't necessary) and after she made a surprised utterance with an expletive in it as soon as she saw it, she said it needed a wound vac.  By the time we got the insurance approval, though, I had several weeks where I had to be traveling for work and would not be around for a home nurse to come and change the dressing. By the time we could arrange for it, the skin had started to grow back on the shallower "Fallopian tube" areas and we didn't want to hurt the skin growth, so I just continued to clean and pac****il the giant crater healed up on its own.

The scars that I ended up with look more like burn scars than incisions, so a scar revision isn't going to work. There  isn't enough skin that's not scarred to cover the surface area of what they would have to cut out.  The worst of the scarring is up under the breasts (I had another open surgery a few years later and she was able to remove some of that skin), and it is light in color now that it is fully healed (it was bright red for a long time) so at least it doesn't immediately jump out at me when I have my bra on (my breasts cover all the the area in the middle when I don't have a bra on).

i was so traumatized by that experience that, even if I had the money for a thigh lift (where there is LOTS of skin and some residual fat), I couldn't do it and risk having craters like that on my inner highs (the thighs are notorious for turning necrotic because the skin is usually in such poor shape).

Lora

Wow, what a story you have to tell. Thank you for sharing your experience. I think you are one brave woman, even with taking the Ativan. I admire your courage. I was lucky in that my recovery from this big surgery was very easy. Mostly because I did not have the tummy tuck, just a small revision to it to convert it to the LBL. Even the thighs were easy. Actually my arms were worse than my thighs. 

I can certainly understand why you would not go through surgery again. I am glad that you are all healed and well now.