If Olding's consults are free, you might as well schedule a consult with him and see what he has to say.

Michaels operates out of Sibley, yes. Offices are in Rockville and.. Fairfax I think?

I live in the DC area and didn't really want to do recovery away from home, so I pretty much went into my consult with Dr. Michaels knowing "hey, if I like this person, I'm going with him and we'll make the cost work."

I loved him and scheduled my first surgery before I left his office. I talked to other patients of his prior - NYMom and DCGirl. I asked a ton of questions - what I could get done, how I could combine surgeries, what the best order was, if I was fooling myself into thinking that my body was at a good place for reconstruction, what recovery would be like, etc, etc. I had a list in my "surgery book" that I took to every appointment.

As for combinations, that'll depend on you and the surgeon - because not every LBL takes the same amount of time, and not every BL does either. In theory they can be combined.

Yeah they are all different. I had a catheter in but they removed it about 3-4hrs after surgery. Once I was out of recovery and in my room for the night. Almost immediately I felt I had to pee and wanted to get up. One nurse said no "you don't have to pee it's just because we took out the catheter" but the other nurse said "c'mon we'll go try". I walked to the washroom about 4hrs post op and boy did I pee lol (sorry TMI) and did every few hrs after that for the night.

My PS also had some things on my legs that hugged them from the knee down - like electric filled with air and contracted and released. I had those on my legs overnight but when home the next morning with needles/blood thinners for 5 days.

Ill be interested to hear how your recovery goes - keep us posted

I hope you'll at least be on lovenox?

It's funny how different surgeons are. My surgeon said "don't be afraid of water" and I showered 24 hrs after surgery (that one kinda sucked not gunna lie - hurt and felt sick) but then I showered every single day since then too. I didn't wash the area with soap necessarily but washed above and just let the soapy water run over it and then rinsed well.

My PS also only does one drain - I've read some do up to 4. My drain certainly did it's job and as much as I hated it I didn't push to get it out because it was oddly satisfying emptying the bulb and knowing that the fluid is out of my body and not just sitting there. I worry now about seroma.

Good luck on your journey and keep us posted!