Butt results from LBL

Thank you for the kind words.  I do have a great surgeon, he's quite the artist.  I was busting my butt at the gym before surgery, and i'm back to it now.

My surgery lasted 9 hours.  It was originally scheduled for 5.5, but during the front part of the surgery, he saw an abnormal lymph node in my groin.  Said it scared him - black, enlarged, sticky; looked just like metastatic melanoma.  Luckily, it turned out to be ink from my tattoo - apparently my lymphatic system drains in an odd way, because he said the lower back (where i had the tattoo) should drain into a much deeper lymph node that he wouldn't have seen during surgery.

Anyway, he removed a bunch of lymph nodes and had to send them off for pathology, and didn't want to close me up before the results were back.  Which resulted in a longer OR time.  Normally, his circumferentials take 5-6 hours, but they can go longer.  This is why he would not schedule a breast lift for me at the same time, and as it turned out - that was a good thing.  He does not like to keep patients under for more than 8 hours.  Since you are also having the thigh lift, which i did not have, 8 hours sounds very reasonable.

The open spots are not that uncommon, since the skin is stretched so tightly.  Mine actually healed up much more quickly than he expected.  They cannot resuture if the wound opens, because of the risk of sealing bacteria into the wound.  After 6 weeks that risk drops.  Had my wounds still been open at 6 weeks (which he expected), he would have cleaned out the new scar tissue and restitched them so the scar would be nice and thin, matching the rest of the scar.  However, since mine were closed at that point, we're just going to do a scar revision a few months down the road, after the underlying tissues have had a chance to heal.  I honestly don't think it looks that bad, and it's on my hip where no one other than my husband will ever see it, but my doc wants perfection.  I'm going to have my breasts done late in the summer, so he'll probably do the revision on the scar at that time.

Good luck with your surgery!  I think everyone has nerves ahead of time, but the results are totally worth it!

Thank you for your great explanation.  Thank goodness there was nothing seriously wrong with you.  I can only imagine what the OR was like when your surgeon found the node.  He sounds very dedicated and conscientious.  I appreciate all the information.  The length of surgery is a little concerning, but I have confidence in my choice.

I have pics out in the Photo section on Dr Sauceda's group.  I sent you a PM with the password.  I have both before and afters.  The butt lift really helped, plus the butt augmentation (fat implants) help to round out the upper part.  My body surgery was almost 12 hrs, but Dr Sauceda did an LBL, BL, arms and inside groin lift.  4 days after I had a full neck & face lift.  

I'll be going back in Jan for the UBL.  He told me I needed it, but couldn't see my back... why care about it... now, with everything else nice, the rolls on the upper back are too annoying, be gone I say!