Welcome back! If you’ve missed what this Tummy Tuck and BBL Surgery Day post is about feel free to refer back to these previous posts here, here, and here!
Now that you’re all caught up let’s talk about: Surgery Day!
I had to stop eating by 9pm the night before and no more water after 12am. Went to bed with a ton of nerves and a 7:30am wake up time. I had taken a shower the night before and washed my hair, but that morning I took another shower with this special body wash the office had given me to kill all of the germs on my skin prior to surgery.
My surgery package included a ride to and from the surgery center. Because of Covid my companion was not allowed to come with me, but my driver was super nice. We had a nice chat about his life in America since moving out of Communist Venezuela, which was a nice distraction for my nerves despite the intense subject matter. The surgery center is also in Fort Lauderdale about 10 minutes down the street from the hotel. They got me right in, did a quick covid temperature check (I’m vaxxed by the way), and got me set up in a waiting room. I changed into a dressing gown and my compression socks, got my IV, had a really nice long chat with my anesthesiologist (who informed me I forgot to tell them I wanted Experal, which I def wanted), then met my doctor!
Dr Palladino is awesome. I had not met him prior to surgery day, but his office had gone a great job of making me feel comfortable and reassuring me that I was in good hands. I was really excited to meet him and discuss our plan for surgery. I really felt like he listened to me and we were really on the same page. We decided to add on chin liposuction as well since I was already going to be under and it was no big deal. We got me all marked up and then I was whisked off to the surgery room. I laid down on the table and then woke back up a few hours later in recovery.
I didn’t feel nauseas, which I was really thankful for since that was not the case with the VSG. The VSG nausea was more from them pumping me full of air and the gas from that was gone once I started walked and burping. The experal I talked about earlier is a shot they can give you in your stomach that is like a long acting pain reliever for the next three days. I HIGHLY recommend getting that if it’s an option. It was an extra $500, but it was totally worth it in my opinion. I do have a high pain tolerance, but really anything to make your recovery easier is worth it in my opinion. So I woke up just feeling sleeping, no real pain. They had me there for probably an hour (I was pretty out of it so not sure the exact time), then had me get up and walk a little bit to help prevent blood clots. They put me back in the van with my BBL pillow and I was on my way back to the hotel.
Once we got back to the hotel my nurse, Ashley, was waiting there for me with a wheelchair. She got me up to my room where she had already set up my bed with those like basically puppy pads covering everything since I was pretty leaky. I went back to sleep for a few hours. Would wake up on and off to take some meds and drink a little bit of protein shake and some water.
TMI Alert:
What I didn’t know is that if you do not pee within so many hours of your surgery you have to get a catheter. I was also unaware that peeing would be difficult after surgery. It makes sense in hind sight since they are messing with your lower ab muscles, but that is totally something that was missing from ALL of the research I had done. I basically forced myself to pee with like 20 minutes left to spare before they were going to make me get a catheter. Almost fainted. Worth it. Since then it’s gotten easier, but is totally still weird. What I also wish is that in addition to stool softeners I would have known to also just go ahead and take Miralax or some type of laxative. Anytime you have surgery constipation is a side effect of anesthesia, I just didn’t realize how bad it would be this time around. I’ll cover more of that in my two week recap. 😉
That is basically it for surgery day! Stay tuned for the week one and week two recaps as well as my tips for surgery!
Happy Reading!
-Savvy
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