The much anticipated stomach liposuction took place on February 15th, 2017. Like the other 5 surgeries, my husband and I stayed at the CitizenM hotel (man we love the rain showers) which is only a few minutes walk from the clinic. The only difference this time is there was a lot of construction being done so we had to zig zag a bit to get to the sidewalk that went towards the clinic.
Overall, the stomach liposuction was THE worst of all 6 surgeries so far (and what’s worse, is I’ll need a second stomach liposuction surgery! But more about that for another post). It didn’t end with as much fat being taken out as I anticipated and just hurt like someone shoving a hot brand in my intestines. I think a hot brand in my intestines might be slightly more preferable and that’s saying a lot from me due to my super high pain tolerance.
So the following is the complete rundown of surgery #6, the stomach liposuction. Be warned, it’s not sugar coated. It hurt. It fucking hurt. I don’t think I can write enough fucks to really convey how much this one hurt. But, the run down must go on so here we go…
My husband and I got to my clinic’s waiting room at about 8:30 in the morning for my stomach liposuction appointment.
Everyone came down the dutch death trap called stairs (funny enough, “trap” literally means stairs in dutch and they are a trap, especially when drunk). At some point the surgeon also showed up and chit chatted with us. We talked about Trump a little bit (because the dutch always have to quiz the american) and he talked about how he was just in New York helping some surgeons do abdominalplasties. He said if the surgeon in Utrecht didn’t want to deal with the loose skin, he might consider sending me off to New York since he was pretty pleased with the work of those surgeons (I don’t know much more beyond this).
Around 9am I was called up the stairs to get ready. Since there really hasn’t been any change in the pre-op procedure, I’m not going to bore you with it. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do that right here. Unlike last time the scale was working with everyone, so there weren’t any grumbling nurses trying to convert stones to kilograms.
Pre-op Procedures before Liposuction
Once I got out to the part of the clinic with the beds, the nurse took my blood pressure and temperature. For once in 6 surgeries my temperature was normal and there was absolutely no discussion about why it’s a few decimal points above normal. Honestly, I thought there would be since the night before I had HORRIBLE cramps and I thought my period was trying to force itself on me. Usually my temp goes up a bit when that happens, so I won’t lie when I said I was holding my breath a bit. I really didn’t want to have that discussion for my stomach liposuction surgery and get it postponed because the doctor thought I’d be a bad risk for surgery that day (it’s happened before with my calves).
One thing I did notice though in regards to my blood pressure, while it was uncomfortable, for the first time in I don’t know how long it didn’t hurt. I didn’t have to grunt in pain, or ask them not to take my blood pressure every 20 minutes. So that was a nice change. It still hurt pretty badly when I went down to Tilburg in December to make the appointment for the stomach liposuction surgery.
Before the doctor came out to see me, the head nurse started to talk to me about compression for post stomach liposuction. Apparently I was supposed to bring the girdle that they gave me for my butt, but nobody passed that message to me (and I really didn’t think about it). It turns out because of this I’d get the newest model of the Mirena girdle (which is much better in my opinion) but apparently the same size as the old one. My stomach did grow an entire inch in the past 6 months so I’m not too surprised.
Then the doctor came in and once again I was cheated out of drawings on my body
He did take pictures of me, which he only did on the 1st surgery, but he told the nurse to put the pen away. When I went “awww” he laughed and told me there really wasn’t much point since there wasn’t much shaping that needed to be done since I’d be having an abdominalplasty eventually. We talked a few minutes about my limbs from the previous surgeries, especially since some of the nurses had asked, and then the nurse preparing me got permission to give me the Valium and other drugs.
The operation before me was running a little late
I didn’t get into the surgery until about 11:30 in the morning. That’s ok because I managed to get a little sleep since I slept like crap the night before.
But, when I was taken into the operating theater, they took my gown off and started the iodine bath. Either my body wasn’t as warm this time around, or the iodine solution was a little warmer this time, but I wasn’t standing there wet, naked and shaking from the cold this time. Instead, the nurses (who have been there from my previous surgeries) were all asking about the adventures I had been on since my last surgery and now. So I got to tell them about hiking almost 100km in my 2 week vacation to the states last November. They could tell I thought the surgeries were more than worth it because I had a big ass grin on my face when I was telling about all that hiking.
We also talked about some of the things I plan to do in the upcoming months after my stomach has healed, like doing some of the parcourses here in the Netherlands and going to Wales to do some extreme adventure stuff in a cave (zip lining, climbing, and a 70ft free fall).
Once they had me properly doused in iodine solution, my feet wrapped up, electrodes to monitor my heart rate, and the blood pressure cuff on, the surgeon came in to start the infiltration process.
Infiltration Process of Tumescent Liposuction
I know I’ve talked about the infiltration process my surgeon uses before, it’s not like what some other surgeons use where it’s a separate system. My surgeon’s machine is all in one, 
which means it both does infiltration (i.e. puts the local anesthesia in the area) and suction (i.e. the liposuction). This means that the vibrating cannula is used in both processes to help break up the fat as much as possible.
This is all fine and dandy except this means that he went over my ribs with that fucking vibrating cannula over, and over, and over again. My ribs, just under my boobs (where the white arrows are), are normally pretty tender. I’ve no idea why, they’ve always been that way. So you can imagine how much agony this was. Of course during the infiltration process, the first few passes were full on painful since there wasn’t anything to numb the pain.
Afterwards, it did dull it down a bit but even once the local took over and the liposuction was taking place, it was already bruised and hurt. So I knew that the following days were going to be pretty fun.
For the rest, the infiltration wasn’t horrible. Some places hurt more than others as was the case with my thighs, calves, arms and butt. One thing I should mention is unlike other areas, he only made 4 punctures for the stomach liposuction, 2 in my upper abdominal area and 2 in the lower. He didn’t want to do a whole bunch of punctures since the more there are, the bigger the risk of infection.
After he got me full of the local anesthesia, he let me lay there for about 30 minutes to let the tumescent fluid set. The one big change from when I had my legs done is it took about 15 minutes for my back to really start aching. I think this is partly because the “fat ridge” that had been on my butt is gone and I had gone in for dry needling a few days before to try to relax my back as much as possible. I really wish he gave some sort of muscle relaxer as part of the pre-op medicine since apparently I’m far from the only one with this complaint. Of course this time while I could move my legs and kind of twist them from side to side, there was too much weight on my stomach (and it was pumped up and a bit awkward) to do hip thrusts to really engage the back muscles and help relax them. Ah well.
I guarantee once he started with the actual stomach liposuction, all back discomfort and pain was blown away with the wind.
The stomach liposuction itself started off pretty painlessly
If you look at my pre-op stomach, you can see that there is A LOT of fat. My surgeon estimates that there’s probably about 10 liters on there, I think closer to 12. If you include the fat on my sides that reach around to my back a bit, plus my underarm fat that’s now growing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the total is close to 14 or 15 liters.
As usual, when the doctor got the cannula close to the edge of where the anesthesia fluid was, it started getting painful since the anesthesia is a bit weaker there. It’s happened in all previous 5 surgeries so having it happen during the stomach liposuction wasn’t unexpected at all. What I didn’t expect at all, was the puncture wounds where he puts the cannula through burning like the fires of hell. He was tearing the skin a little bit in order to get the farther bits of fat and once again this is because he only wanted 4 puncture wounds to decrease the risk of infection. All I could do is curse and tolerate it.
When he got down on the front of my stomach an inch, maybe two or 3 (I’m not sure how far down on the fat he went, I was 53.5 inches going in and am just under 52 inches in my compression garment) it started hurting like holy hell. It was almost the same level of pain as when he tried to get my sides during my butt liposuction, but slightly more. It’s clear he got to the point where the tumescent fluid wasn’t really there anymore.
The doctor said he was done with the stomach liposuction and I asked how much he got out
He told me 6 and I guess I started whining a bit since he agreed to take out a little bit more since my pain threshold is pretty high and he felt like I was a good risk. So when I finally cried uncle (I had to hold on a little longer since he couldn’t leave it lopsided) he officially, on paper had 7 liters out. Unofficially, between you and me, it’s around 8.
So at that point he left me to the nurses and went down to talk to my husband who was in the waiting room. The nurses put plasters on the punctures, cleaned up fluid, got my compression garment on and built a diaper out of many puppy pads. This really wasn’t the best “diaper” they’ve built since the range of motion of my feet suffered pretty badly. If I took too big of steps or tried to lift my leg (to get in bed or get in the car) the “diaper” started to rip. But, it just needed to last long enough to hold me over in the recovery room and keep my car clean while my husband takes me 5 minutes down the road to the hotel room.
The one gigantic difference post surgery for my stomach, as opposed to the 5 other surgeries, the pain instantly hit me. I wanted to just throw up from the second I stepped off the table. Everyone was concerned with my high blood pressure, but what they all failed to notice was my right foot was wiggling a million miles a minute. My foot flopping back and forth is the way I tend to deal with 
pain that I just have to suffer though. So since it was furiously thumping, my heart rate was elevated thus my blood pressure was up. So I had to calm myself, do some deep breathing exercises to prove to everyone and the surgeon that it was only my pain response that was freaking out the blood pressure machine.
Once everyone was satisfied, they got me dressed and sent me on to the car which was a bitch to get into due to the diaper. It also hurt, really, really fucking hurt. Unlike the other 5 operations where I could actually shut the door myself, that wasn’t happening.
The rest of the night in the hotel was pretty un-extraordinary. I didn’t leak when I got up to walk around at all (I had to force myself to walk a bit since walking HURT), so my husband got off really easy. I did leak in bed and not a little bit either. I guess it’s because I found I could actually lay on my side a bit and the pressure helped push the fluid out of the lower 2 puncture wounds. Since I was pretty exhausted from not sleeping well the night before and enduring the liposuction, I dozed pretty much from the time I got back to the hotel around 4pm until dinner.
We watched The Huntsman (which wasn’t too bad) and then I ended up falling asleep. I did have to get up an pee quite a bit during the night, but again, there was no leakage. My husband was very pleased with the 6 hours of solid sleep he got before I woke him up the first time to scratch my back.
My conclusion on this surgery is stomach liposuction is THE WORST of them all. And that’s saying a lot since I have a super high pain threshold. What’s even worse, is I’m going to have to have a 7th surgery, but that’s for the day 1 post op post.
PetraAnn
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