Liposuction swelling, is it normal for the area treated to swell up and become hard afterwards? The answer is a resounding YES! If you belong to any of the liposuction for lipedema support groups, you’ll read many accounts of the treated limbs becoming very swollen, hard, and painful. It even happens to normal, non-lippy people who are getting only a little bit of fat removed as well! Here’s some reading:
Is it possible to have 20lbs of swelling after liposuction?
Liposuction swelling – how long until it goes down?
Liposuction swelling – how is your recovery? (even someone called Haylie12 has the 5th day post op swell going on)
So as you can see, it’s really not exclusive to those of us with lipedema. Plenty of good folks go through the “it doesn’t look like anything was done!” or “it’s even bigger than before!” swelling episodes!
For me, liposuction swelling always seems to come on day 5 post op. Except for my arms, the liposuction swelling came on day 6. I’m pretty sure it came later because I didn’t have my arm lipo until about 3pm and didn’t get back to the hotel until about 7 at night. Meanwhile, everything else was done in the morning and I was back at the hotel by noon or 1pm.
Here’s my liposuction swelling timeline (mileage may vary from person to person of course based on healing capabilities, health, genetics, type of anesthesia, etc):
- Day of surgery: no apparent swelling outside of the fact that tumescent fluid is still in the limb. My surgeon performs tumsecent liposuction under local anesthesia so I can walk the moment the surgery is over. He also doesn’t stitch the wounds, so I do a lot of walking to try to drain the area of extra fluid.
- Day 1 post op: still no apparent sign of swelling. This is the day that the liposuctioned area will appear closest to the final result in my opinion.
- Day 2 post op: the area liposuctioned is a little warm to the touch, not infection warm but apparent that there’s been trauma and its trying to heal warm. There may be a little swelling, but nothing massive or concerning.
- Day 3 post op: there’s a little more swelling, but nothing concerning or painful.
- Day 4 post op: about the same as day 3.
- Day 5 post op: this is the day that my body finally realizes what I’ve done to it and its about to stage a massive protest. The area swells up to its original size, or bigger and becomes 100x more sensitive than before. This is when compression REALLY becomes fun (not).
Honestly, I’ve come to dread day 5, especially after “the incident” with my right thigh. On day 5 not only did it swell up to it’s original size, but it also massively swelled around my knee so that the swelling acted as the most severe knee brace you could put on someones leg. Looking back, I think the liposuction around my knee was only partially responsible for this massive swelling. The other part was because my surgeon uses a vibrating cannula to help break up the fat, and it vibrated right on top, behind, and to the side of my knee. The muscles, tendons and ligaments really didn’t like this so I think that was the other part of the massive “brace” like swelling that happened around my knee.
Because my leg was 1,000x more tender than before the day 5 swelling, and I couldn’t bend it to save my life, my husband had to help me put on my thigh high compression stockings. Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband dearly. He’s supported and helped me through every step, fought the insurance on my behalf since my dutch sucks donkey ass, and picked up the slack on house cleaning where I couldn’t do it. Yes, I love him. However, he’s like a fucking elephant in a china shop when it comes to delicate and gentle tasks like helping his wife pull up her compression stockings without causing massive amounts of pain.
So, on day 5 we were struggling to pull up my compression stocking. He had the back of the stocking, I had the front, and we were trying to bring it up without dragging it up the skin. About mid thigh the band slipped from his fingers and it snapped, full force, in the back of my thigh. You know how movies have that moment where the bullet is shot from the gun in slow motion? That’s exactly what it was like for me. When the band hit the back of my thigh, it took a few miliseconds for the pain to register in my brain and when it did, a murderous scream came out of my mouth.
To this day I’m still surprised nobody called the police thinking there was a murder or some sort of domestic abuse going on since the windows to the bedroom were open.
After the initial scream, all I could do was stand in place, shake and cry. Or I should say wail at the top of my lungs. Imagine a 38 year old woman, standing half naked with a thigh high stocking half way up her thigh, wailing at the top of her lungs. That was me until after my husband got the compression stocking off. It was a good hour before I was willing to try again, and the thing that sucked the most was knowing I HAD to get the damned thing on.
My right thigh also swelled up on day 5 post op, but this time it swelled up bigger than it was before the surgery. This one actually was a mystery for awhile, until my personal trainer actually said something that made sense… there was either 8 or 10 weeks between my left and right thigh. I can’t remember exactly, but you can go back in my liposuction journal and check if you want the timing.
One of the things that I’ve come to love since moving to the Netherland is cycle. Bicycles are a way of life for the dutch and I live next to a nature area that has kilometers upon kilometers of bike path and road to cycle on. So as soon as the weather becomes slightly warmer and not as rainy, I start cycling again anywhere from 15 to 30+ km a day weather permitting. This isn’t so strange. Neither is the fact that after several months of no riding due to winter, the quad muscle deteriorates a bit since you’re not using it. So when cycling season starts again, you’re once again building up strength and muscle…
So what did my PT say that made sense? You built up muscle that wasn’t present in the other thigh in the time between the first thigh surgery and the next. I’m betting your surgeon bruised the hell out of the muscle. When I mentioned this to my surgeon (because he was puzzled on the extreme swelling as well) he agreed that the bruising was probably it. He fully admitted he’s not used to working on women who actually have really developed muscles.
My butt also had day 5 swelling, but not as extreme. I think this is because a major part of the surface area get sat upon, which causes compression. Now, even to this date (going on 6.5 months after butt liposuction), I still have some swelling in the upper part of my butt where the lower back starts. This is just now starting to respond to MLD and go away, so I’m 100% sure it’s all because of the lack of compression in that area. Even the compression garment I had to wear didn’t offer very good compression in that particular spot, so I just have to keep waiting.
Day 6 on my arms and calves produced swelling, but nowhere near the swelling on my thighs. Something else I’ve thought about, and it might prove true, is the amount and length of liposuction swelling might also correspond with the amount taken out. Both my arms and calves only had about 3.5 liters taken out combined. Meanwhile, my thighs had 7 liters and my butt over 8. So with my thighs and butt, there was a lot of room for the swelling to take place, but not so much for my arms.
Not to mention with my arms and calves, they were constantly in motion. Thighs and butt not so much. That could also explain the length of the swelling a bit.
So when it comes down to it, yes, post liposuction swelling is perfectly normal. I know that it’s concerning watching the liposuctioned limb swell up to pre-surgery sizes. I know it makes you question your sanity for doing this to yourself. However, have patience. It will eventually go down, it just takes time. Sometimes it just takes a few weeks to start going down and in some cases (like my butt) it takes months.
Wear your compression garments as instructed by your surgeon, try to get some MLD for the area (and try to perform self MLD each day), walk loads, and the hardest of all, be patient.
PetraAnn
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