Belly Buttons and Backsides

August 13, 2009

It’s been one week and one day since surgery and I’ll admit, it’s been rough going. There’s been a tremendous amount of pain, primarily limited to the tightened stomach muscles, general aches and pains, and overall weakness. Aside from a couple laps around our complex courtyard and a trip into town for a much needed visit to Starbucks, I’ve spent most of the past week lying in bed or on the couch or in the recliner sleeping in between bits and pieces of really bad TV. Another question to add to life’s great mysteries is why is it that there’s never anything good on TV when you’re home sick?

The days have mostly been spent sleeping because the nights have mostly been spent whimpering and whining. They warned the pain would be worse at night and if there’s one positive thing I can say about the faceless, nameless they’s is that they do not lie. Every time I woke up during the night it felt like a car, more along the lines of a SUV than a Pria, was lying on top of me, crushing everything from shoulders to knees. I finally discovered that to beat the pain I had to have my alarm go off every three hours so I could pop a pain medication and when I started doing that, while it still felt like a car was crushing me, at least the circus clowns who were weighting it down had jumped out and lightened the load considerably.

So has the pain been worse than I anticipated? Yep. Do I regret having done the surgery? Nope. Even when I’ve been whimpering my loudest the words “What was I thinking?” has never crossed my mind because I knew I’d chosen to do this, the pain would eventually pass, and the end result would be worth the price, and after having caught a first glimpse yesterday during my post-op with the surgeon, Dr. Elliott Lavey, I’m absolutely convinced this was the right decision and path for me.

D accompanied me to Dr. Lavey’s office yesterday so that he could remove the sutures from the liposuction sites on my legs and the surgical bandages that covered the incision site across my upper back and the one that runs along my lower abdomen from side to side. There are actually three layers of sutures on the two full incision sites and all run below the surface skin layer and should dissolve on their own. I was surprised and pleased to see how well the incisions have already healed. The incision is little more than a pale red line, the thickness of a fine point Sharpee with a series of dots set about an inch apart on either side. Within another week the skin should be completely closed together so that I can begin massaging the area with aloe vera and Vitamin A oil to increase the healing and fading of what scars will remain.

Even though I’d removed my Lycra body suit a couple times during the week for cleaning (both mine and its) the thick padding of the bandages had made it virtually impossible for me to see the early results from the surgery so yesterday in his office was my first chance to take a real look.

This is one of those times when a picture could indeed say more than a thousand words but this is also one of those times when due to personal boundaries that do not include the public viewing of before and after photos of my body al naturale, the words are going to have to do.

I’m thrilled. I am beyond thrilled. I’m ecstatic. The hand fulls of loose skin are gone and aside from some general squishiness attributed to the remaining swelling, my belly is flat. The tauntness of my stomach is due not only to the removal of the excess skin but those aforementioned tightened stomach muscles which were shortened by approximately four inches. In the future if you ask me what I’m doing and I tell you I’m just gazing at my navel, understand that the odds are I mean that literally and not figuratively. I’ve been belly button gazing for the past 24 hours just trying to get use to the idea that this is my body, my belly, and my button. Now don’t get me wrong. I always had a belly button. It’s just that you had to pass through a long tummy tunnel of fat to actually locate it. Now it’s just there. The same ol’ belly button I was born with minus the tummy tunnel. The results on my back side are just as exciting with no sagging skin or bulges and if nothing changed from this moment on I’d be more than satisifed and yet with a procedure like this it can take as much as a year, even a little more, to see the full benefits of the surgery. Cool.

So this is how my body looks now and as I come to accept it in its new form, it’s important to put it out into the universe that I never did any of this because I wanted someone else’s body. I never fantasized about having “her hips” or “that woman’s waist,” or “curves like that woman over there.” I’ve never wished I was someone else or looked like someone else or acted like someone else. In every area of my life; spiritual, emotional, and now physical, it’s just about finding and living in to who the “real me” is and this surgery, along with the final one to follow soon, is just another step along that path.

Posted in Body Image, Reconstructive Surgery