Hi everyone,
Definitely not dead, the pain is making that abundantly clear! So I had my surgery on Tuesday and had an overnight stay as I had liposuction to my abdomen and flanks, in addition to the gyne surgery. I arrived at about 10 o'clock and was shown to my room. About 15 mins later one of the nurses came and checked my details and told me to change in to the gown, underwear and stockings, a fetching combination! About 10 mins after that Karidis came in and marked me up. He said it would be about 1.5 hours before I would be taken down. I watched TV until one of the nurses came and said it was time.
I was taken to the anesthetic room and met the senior nurse and anesthetist. They put various sensors on me and put the cannula in my wrist. They started to inject various drugs into me and the anesthetist kept repeating 'you'll start to feel light headed son'. About 10 seconds later I was asleep. The next thing I knew I was awake and really tired. I had another nurse checking on me for about 20 mins. My o2 saturation was 94 so they put me back on oxygen (it should be 96+). Then they took me back to the room. No pain on waking as they had given me morphine. This did make my heart race for a while (which is normal for me) and my heart rate was 120. My o2 dropped back to 94 so I spend the rest of the afternoon on oxygen. I had my gowns changed at least 10 times as fluid kept pouring out of me (this is normal as they inject fluid before the liposuction).
I spent the rest of the night recovering, I had painkillers quite often and the Tramadol kept making my breathing slow so when I went to sleep I'd stop breathing and jerk myself awake. The nurses said this was a normal side effect and so weren't concerned. They came and checked my blood pressure, o2 and temperature quite often and also game me antibiotics at midnight and 6am. I had a pretty rough night's sleep as the room was hot and I had the window open. Being London, though, there's traffic all hours of the day and night so the noise kept me awake. I had a really nice nurse look after me overnight. In the morning Amy (one of Karidis' nurses) came to see me and walked me through my post-op instructions. I asked her how much fat and gland had been taken out. She said they took a total of 4.5 liters of fat (1.1 from my chest, 3 from my abdomen and 0.4 from my flanks). They also took 21g of gland from my left side and 26 from my right. Then Karidis' came to check on me. He said I'd had a lot of fat removed and that the results would be dramatic.
He suggested that I shower before I left and got one of the nurses to help me. They undid my compression vest and I got the first chance to see the results. For the first time in as long as I can remember I have a flat chest and stomach. I was taken to the walk in shower as I was very sore at this point and the nurse helped me. They left the bandages on so the shower would make it easier to remove them. I've got to say the shower wasn't the best I've had. It was uncomfortable to sit down and there was bloody water everywhere. It looked a lot worse than it was but it's still unpleasant. Then I was taken back to my room and had the bandages removed. This part was absolute agony and I don't want to have to go through that again. The nurse gave me some more Tramadol and left me to recover as I was in a lot of pain. They put the new compression garment on me and I got dressed, packed my things and headed home. I made sure I was drugged up for the journey home as it was 1 hour 40 mins. Not the longest but the pain was more than I'd anticipated.
As soon as I can I'll upload some before and after pictures. I can't wait for this first week to be over and the worst of the symptoms to start to subside. I'll post again soon.
Paul
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Topic: Surgery with Karidis completed. (Read 6438 times)