Knocked the wind out of my sails

had to delete

I would tell your cousin to seek a second opinion from a different reconstructive surgeon who will help her, because I am positive I know people who have had plastics after radiation and I am sure there are great doctors out there that can help her.  My doctor that did my plastics is the chief of a residency program at Yale in CT and he is a reconstructive surgeon with amazing credentials, as well as an amazing teacher.  I feel bad for your cousin being so down on herself that she is now regretting wls altogether and making it hard on you also.  This is such an ugly domino effect going on here and the guy that dumped her, well can we just shoot him.  Ugghh.  You know she is only hurting and thats why she is discouraging you, hopefully she will see she is being unfair to you and that you need her support now more then ever.  The reality is stretched out skin with stretch marks thats been stretched out for years isn't gonna go back in no matter what or how you lose weight.  Believe me I know how gross stretched out stretch mark riddled skin was, I had plastics and still have stretch marks even though I have a perfectly flat stomach they couldn't all be cut off.

Good Luck!

I think you can certainly sympathize with your cousin but still go your own way. I'm assuming you've done your homework and you know what you need to do.  I'm pretty sure you didn't make your decision after talking to just one person who told you that you should have WLS--why would you listen to just one person who now changes her mind and tells you NOT to have WLS?  It's sad that your cousin has been treated so poorly by the men in her life and even sadder that she is now her own worst enemy.  She obviously needs more help that you can give her and would benefit from talking with a therapist to work out her feelings.  But you may need to set some boundaries with her about this subject.  You are probably not a therapist and even if you are you shouldn't be treating your family.

Keep your head in the game. Don't let one person's opinion change your well-thought out decision.

I think the "why" is pretty straightforward.  She is angry and upset about what the plastic surgeon told her and she is doing what a lot of us do when we have a significant disappointment: expanding the emotional response from the specific issue to other things that are somehow related (sometimes even if they are only tangentially related), "catastrophizing" them ("This is the worst things that could have happened and I wish I had never even had the WLS!"), and then expanding their experience to other people's lives ("since I wish I hadn't had WLS right now, I don't think you should have it either" {when the truth is that she likely does NOT really wish she had not lost the weight}).

She will likely calm down, and if she gets a second opinion from another plastic surgeon that is more positive, she will likely go back to being supportive of you having surgery.  

I would definitely encourage her to get a second opinion.  Yes, some people who have had radiation in a certain area have skin in that area that might have healing issues, but it doesn't necessarily mean she cannot have plastic surgery.  If she needed surgery for a medical reason, they would certainly still do it (and would deal with any healing issues if they arose). She might just need to be prepared for the possibility of healing complications.  

I have never had radiation but my entire tummy tuck incision turned necrotic and it took 5 months for the giant hole in my belly to heal up, but it DID heal up. It looks like burn scars on my belly, but I would still take those scars over the extra skin and bulging abdominal muscle that I started with!

Lora