Lower Body Lift Experience
I was scheduled to have my lower body lift on December 13 at 8:00 am with Dr. Morrissey and Presbyterian Plano Hospital. My husband Paul dropped me off at the hopsital and stayed with me til about 7:30 when he had to go to work. We decided it was more important for him to have an extra day off work at the end to take care of me rather than wasting it when the hospital would be caring for me.
They put me under and before I knew it, I was awake and the procedure was over. I felt nauseated and said that I was going to throw up. Then I fell asleep. I found out later that they had given me a high dosage of anti nausea medicine that was extremely sleep inducing. Well it worked and I didn't have any more nausea after that time.
I wasn't in too much discomfort as long as I wasn't moving, but I wasn't able to adjust myself in the bed at all due to very sore ab muscles. I was wearing a compression garment that started below my breasts and went down to just above my knees. The doctor told me to wear the compression garment until Sunday, then I could remove it, shower, clean the incisions, and put on a 2nd clean garment.
I was catheterized so that I would not have to get up at all on the first day. I had 4 drains coming out of me., tubes that ended with see through little balls that needed to be drained every few hours. Blood an fluid accumulated in them.
I slept about 2 - 4 hours that night and woke up a lot. I had extremely dry mouth and nurses kept checking on me. Around 8 am, they removed my catheter. Not a fun experience. Then they said I needed to pee before I could be discharged.
A technician came in to remove the fluid from my drains and proceeded to spill a cup of blood/fluid all over me and my compression garment. Because of that I had to get up and have them change into the new garment which was an ordeal. And I was still unable to pee. By 6 pm, I still had not peed so they had to put a catheter in me again, drain, and remove it. It was a horrible experience. After that I felt like I had to pee but still could not. They gave me until 10 pm or I would have to stay another night. I finally went around 9:30 pm after trying everything and sitting there for hours.
Walking around was hard, but they had me walk once around the hospital. I have to walk completely stooped over, and it feels like a board was inserted underneath my skin. They discharged me at 10 and Paul took me home. I had to go up 3 flights of stairs, but I just did it slowly and it was fine. By the time I got to my recliner, I was exhausted from the 2 days in the hospital with bodily trauma and only 2 - 4 hours of sleep. I felt really bad, and I still had major urges to pee but could not completely empty my bladder. I was able to get some sleep from about 1am to 6am, then again from 7 am to 11:00 am. Then I had a protein shake and ate some food. I felt much better after that and the pain was even better. Until then, I had just sat in the recliner miserably, dozing off here and there, but after eating, I was able to watch tv, and get on the computer to distract myself.
Paul has been a good nurse. He has to empty my drains every now and then and record the time and how much fluid came out of them. He's gotten good at helping me get on my feet and getting back into the recliner afterward. I basically have a sheet draped over the recliner, a small pillow behind my back, a larger one under my head and a large one under my knees to keep them bent when the chair is reclined. My thigh muscles are sore from having to walk in a perpetual squat. When I'm still I mostly don't have any pain except for a small part of the incision. It feels like 1 or 2 inches of the incision really hurts. I'm wondering if it's a drain tube pressing against the area because the compression garment was squeezing the drain tubes up my sides so tightly that they pressed into my skin and really burned. We ended up putting a panty liner between the tubes and my skin and that really helped!
I'm supposed to shower on Sunday and then put on the new garment and wear that for another day. I'm worried about showering and cleaning the incision line. He gave us instructions on how to do it, but I think it might be painful. We'll see how it goes.
