Am I going to be happy?

I went to my consult and the doctor said that the insurance would cover the removal of my  a Panni and a Breast Lift.  This is considered reconstructive surgery.  They will not cover a TT because I do not have the required separation in my muscles.  They would consider this procedure cosmetic.  I said "well that is what I get for taking care of myself by doing sit ups."  I guess the only question is if I will be happy with the results?  I would love to hear from people who have had their panni removed and if it made a difference.  Would more sit ups help the rest after the removal of it? 
Meg

I will be happy and thankful to get help with some of this for free.  Just trying to figure out if the TT is the better way to go.
Meg

I know that some others in the past have had their insurance pay for pannus removal, and then paid a fee on top of that to include the tummy tuck tightening portion to make up the difference. You could look into that as an option. My muscle separation was mild, but I'm glad I had the full tuck. My waist is 4 inches smaller. However, the pannus was what bothered me the most and I still would have been thrilled to have just that gone. You will have a substantially easier recovery with just pannus removal. But it won't shape your waist as much. Crunches will give you hard abs but the main factor in whether you can see the abs is the amount of fat & skin covering them. Do you have a lot of loose skin above your bellybutton? That won't be remedied by a panni removal or crunches. But if you carry all your loose skin below the bellybutton, you should get a nice result. Honestly, free is free! If you can't afford the full tummy tuck, do the panni removal. It will still be such a big difference.

I had the panni and was pleased with the result. Yes if you can afford to do the full tt do it but I couldn't. A lot of people can't get the panni to be covered by insurance. I'm still working on the breast lift. It was denied twice already.

Julie

 You may be happy enough with the panni, but no amount of sit ups is going to give you results on par with an actual TT. Doing some situps will add some abdominal muscle (which you won't see if there's a layer of fat over them like for most of us), but it will not reshape your torso or remove even more skin. 

Check out some pics on the web of panni only versus TT. 

Hello!!! I myself had my insurance approve the panni only! So I opted to pay for the rest out of pocket. I am paying $3400 and I am thankful that my PS was honest enough to tell me that he felt the results would not be what I wanted with just the panni. He said he felt so strong about it that even if insurance approved panni he would not perform it because he felt it would not give me the best possible results but he could recommend another surgeon in his office that would just do the panni. He explained to me how taking the bottom portion with the panni would be great but it would be like buying a BMW without all the bells and whistles. He said why buy the BMW and pay soo much for it, when you could pay a little more for a loaded BMW. So he gave me a discounted price and explained how extended to the TT will give me the muscle tightening and remove and excess fat and would give me exactly what I wanted. It hit home with me and hey what can I say I want the bells and whistles!! Hope you find this helpful!

Autumn