Muchness and Light

The fates are vicious, and they're cruel.

I’ve spent most of the last week recovering from a surgical repair to my left Achilles tendon. It had been bothering me all year, but I’d put off seeing ortho about it, thinking it would get better eventually. I was already battling cervical and lumbar spine pain. I was back and forth to Alabama to see and care for Bumblebee while he was undergoing chemo and then surgery and then radiation. I was starting grad school. I was still raising two teenage sons and working a full-time job.

But after a ten-day study abroad in Berlin, I came home limping. The sixty miles I walked during that trip were invigorating in so many ways. They also gave a nasty bone spur in my heel the opportunity to lacerate the tendon. There was no option but to remove it, which happened this past week.

I’ll spend two weeks in a splint, then several weeks in a boot. I have at least four weeks on crutches or a knee scooter. Physical therapy won’t begin for at least four weeks, and I’m told to expect a year for full recovery.

I can’t do most of what I normally do around the house, like laundry or cleaning. I can’t reach some of the cabinets to put away the dishes. Cooking is awkward. Showering is a convoluted chore. The boys have been somewhat helpful. Friends have brought food. Pandy and Cookie came to help get some things situated for us this weekend. Max is old enough to make a run to the grocery store for me. (Delivery isn’t terribly helpful, as I can’t really put a lot of the groceries away.)

Elevating my foot is key to healing during the first few weeks. I have spent days in bed or on the couch, binge watching television. My eyes have been too blurry from the pain meds to try to read.

In the midst of it all, I am still dealing with the emotional aftermath of this fucking breakup.

I am forced to be still in ways I hate. For years, I have walked to clear my head, and the exercise is incredibly helpful at dealing with my anxiety and depression. But physical limitations this year have made me far less active. I’ve lost muscle tone and gained some weight back, and that is going to worsen over the next few months before it gets better.

All of this makes for a perfect storm of self-recrimination and frustration and anger.

I find myself journaling the same things over and over—hurt and anger and confusion at how the hell I ended up in this place again, how anyone could be so consciously and callously hurtful of someone they professed to love. Then I think about the times I have hurt others, and I question at what point I stop paying some karmic price for damage I’ve inflicted.

When will I have worked hard enough and atoned enough that other people stop fucking hurting me as some kind of cosmic penance? Why am I the one left holding the hurt and carrying the blame for anyone else? Why does there seem to be no consequence for their actions, except what I am left to deal with?

I don’t know how to get past what I don’t understand.

Moonshine admonished me not to lie in bed crying over this and not to let it define who I am, to look at the good in my life and not get mired in the bad. “I really believe that everything happens for a reason, but sometimes we can’t/don’t or won’t see the reason. I think the reason for this is that you needed to see how string you can be.”

I don’t want to have to be stronger right now. I don’t want another Nietzschean lesson in my own resiliency. I am fully aware of my tenacity and my capacity. The one thing I wanted was a partner to carry some of that for me, sometimes when I needed it most, so I didn’t have to keep breaking my back to do every fucking thing by myself.

He told me he would do that. I trusted him and believed him and gave him the opportunity to be taken at his word, and he shrugged and dropped it all back at my feet when I was least prepared to pick it back up.

And he told me it was for my own good.

I am viscerally offended by the cowardice. I am hurt in ways I have rarely been—after having been as open and honest and brave as I could be to even engage in that relationship with him. I am now literally trapped inside my own head with no physical outlet for it, and I want to crawl out of my own fucking skin.

But I refuse to compartmentalize it away. I refuse to pretend it didn’t happen or that it doesn’t matter, because to do so it to traumatize myself in the exact ways others have hurt me. It won’t define me, but it will be another marker on my journey, another cautionary tale of another person who made me carry their shame and who dismissed me with little thought in order to justify their cowardice.

Another on top of another on top of another on top of another….

Except this one promised me he wouldn’t do exactly this, just so I would never have to feel this again.

I’m not grieving him. I am mourning the loss of trust and love and faith—and at a time when I need it most. Hope feels dangerous and is not allowed right now. I am lamenting the death of my own passion, again, at the hands of a man who will never face me to apologize for the catastrophe he created.

And I’m doing it all from forced confinement.

The timing is ironic. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of forcing me to slow down and deal with it now. Maybe there’s something coming that will need my attention and focus, so that I need to be free of this bullshit to deal with that.

Maybe it’s just coincidental assholery.

Maybe none of it means a damn thing.

 

 

Is this lump out of my head? I think so.

I went into thyroid surgery last Friday expecting 3+ hours and the very real possibility of losing my voice.  Because of complications during my first surgery in 2006, the surgeon was concerned about the laryngeal nerve taking shock or damage.  I was expecting to be voiceless for a period of time, including the risk of permanent voice loss.  (Hot Pocket said maybe I would just be a normal volume.)

Thankfully, after two hours, I emerged groggy but my normal, boisterous self.  (Really.  Ask Growler, who was with me the entire time.  Or the multitude of nurses who seemed to want to hang in my room and chat for an inordinate amount of time.)

Now I have to adjust to life with no thyroid gland and a new dosage of replacement hormone.  The surgeon told me to expect to feel "like crap" until the hormones normalize and the dosing is stable. 

He wasn't kidding. 

I am an emotional wreck. 

At my post-op appointment today, he said I'm healing perfectly.  (Yes, Stephanie, that giant lump on the front of your neck will go away eventually.)  It's also okay that I'm crying and cranky all the damn time. 

Yippee.

Mainly I wanted to update you guys with my recovery.  Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and well wishes and prayers.  Special thanks go to Growler and Big Cexy for taking such great care of me for the bulk of 72 hours.  Also, thanks to my mom and stepdad for taking care of my boys while I was in the hospital and in early recuperation. 

This is also your warning that I'm likely about to start an emotional rollercoaster here at Muchness and Light.  It's my outlet, certainly.  I hope someone other than me gets something from what I write.  Either way, settle in—it may be bumpy for a while. 

Or I could wake up tomorrow, happy as a lark.  There's always hope!

I am extraordinary, if you'd ever get to know me.

After Bounder and I broke up, I realized that not only was I ready but I was willing to date.  That is perhaps the most daunting aspect of my new, single life—finding someone to go out with.  The whole notion of "finding" someone seems so stupidly foreign to me anyway.  I didn't date much, in any traditional sense.  The guys I was with before I was married were all friends before I was with them.  They were in my circle, and it was natural to just start hanging out together all the time.  I don't know that I've ever had the experience of a new guy picking me up, taking me out, and bringing me home.  For that to happen, though, I'll have to step out of my neighborhood and into new places with new people. 

The chick with the pink-striped hair? That's me.

For years I identified myself as an introvert.  For anyone who knows me now, that's pretty hard to believe.  Looking back, I realize I wasn't introverted so much as I was shy.  Once I was comfortable with someone, I could easily talk to them and be my normal, boisterous self.  It just took me a while to feel at ease enough to open my mouth.

I'm still that way, for the most part, which is why it's hard for me to meet new people.  I'm also 40 going into this life.  After being with the same man for twenty years—a man who really was an introvert—I have no idea where to go and what to do, especially if I'm by myself.  There's free time now when the boys are with their father.  I don't have to fill all of that time away from home, or even with someone, but it is nice to have someone different to talk to once in a while. 

Having been fortunate enough to have some remarkably special men in my life, it's going to be difficult to find someone who really turns me on.  I can be a lot to handle, and I'm very picky.  It seems that any man who comes close to what I want and what's good for me will have be a very rare breed of human being.  I deserve to have someone that special—and that person will deserve me—but I also know I'm unlikely to encounter them at the same grocery store I see five times a week. 

Queen Frostine encouraged me to go out and try a few, specific new places.  A couple of male friends have volunteered to be my wingman on a night out.  All of that will be happening over the next few weeks and months, and I'm sure I'll meet some great people, along with the ones who aren't so great.  And just meeting someone, even if I like or date them, doesn't mean I want to love them. 

But the day will come (again) when I fall in love.  As I wrote recently, the bar for me has been set very high.  I know I can't compare one man to another—though women do that shit all the time.  It's not about finding someone as good as or better than somebody that I used to know.  However, because I've had some exceptionally profound experiences, I won't be settling for mundane.  A new relationship doesn't have to be full-on excitement all the time, but it also can't be so lacking in real chemistry that I have to constantly overlook flaws in an attempt to be content. 

I've been thinking a lot about what this as-of-now imaginary person might be like.  If they're important enough to me to really pursue something more serious, I can give them a copy of Persona Non Grata, though it's a little strange to hand a would-be the Zagat Guide to Stephanie.

Here's the Cliff's Notes version:

They have to understand that I am a mom.  My kids are always on my mind, and they are usually in my custody.  Although I do get time without them, they are my main priority right now and will be for quite a while.  Anyone who comes into my life has to be willing to accept them as a part of me, and vice versa. 

They have to understand that I used to be a fat girl.  I often still think like a fat girl.  More than a hundred pounds ago, I was miserable.  The weight loss brought the surgeries, which brought the scars.  And I'm still no small thing and never will be.  I am very cognizant of my body, and I'm still trying to adjust to what I see as myself. 

I'd like them to be bigger than I am.  That seems kind of silly, but I was often heavier than my boyfriends and even my husband.  Still an Amazon, I'm not usually attracted to men who are shorter or slighter than I.  I want someone whose hands and feet are larger than mine, who can make me feel physically small when he holds me.  There's a comfort in that, and I've only really felt it with one person. 

They have to be smart and funny and a little unconventional.  I am impatient and easily bored.  I constantly look to be amused in my life, but I have a dry, bawdy sense of humor.  I do not think or act like other girls.  And I talk a lot.  They have to be able to converse with me and laugh with me. 

They have to see me eye-to-eye.  It was recently brought to my attention that one of the reasons I can make people uncomfortable is that I see them for who they are pretty quickly.  I have always read people well, but after two years of really examining myself and others around me, I have developed the ability to hone in on the truth of people with relative ease.  Turns out a lot of people don't like it when others see through their facade.  But that special person has to be honest both with me and with themselves about who and what they are.  That's how I live my own life, and I expect nothing less from my partner. 

They have to be considerate of me.  My time and attention are finite.  I have a lot of responsibilities.  One of my pet peeves is people who are perpetually late or absent who can't be bothered to let you know.  It's not so hard to call or send a text to say you're running late.  Things happen; just keep me in the loop. 

They can't be an addict.  I've dealt with too many men who use substances as a crutch or even a wheelchair to manage their lives.  I can't handle it.  It's not that I'm opposed to drinking or other people's use of occasional recreational substances.  It's the addictive behavior and emotional stuntedness that are unacceptable to me. 

They have to accept that I can be emotionally high-maintenance.  I feel everything—for myself and my friends and my children and the others I love.  I can be insecure and temperamental.  I need emotional validation and attention, though it can be quiet and subtle.  A squeeze of the hand, a murmur of, "I hear you," is sometimes all it takes.  Sometimes I need someone to listen to me rail and cry for a few minutes.  It's not constant, and I'm always willing to reciprocate. 

Maybe this is a lot.  Maybe not.  I don't have a great frame of reference.  If I'm too particular about what I want, it's because I have years of having exactly what I didn't want.  I refuse to live that way ever again, if I can help it. 

So, whoever you are that may capture my heart next, know what you're in for.  This is only the tip of the iceberg, I promise, but start here; we'll see where this path leads us. 

And chances are that guy you saw me with is just my wingman. 

Tonsillectomy Update

It's been a really rough week in our house.

My youngest son had a tonsillectomy on Wednesday morning.  Tonsils out, pain meds in. 

He started vomiting a little while after we got home that afternoon. 

By six o'clock that night, the ENT was advising me to take him to the emergency room for IV Zofran.

"Overreact much?" I replied unexpectedly.

I called because I knew the vomiting was keeping him from absorbing both fluids and pain medicine.  I didn't want him to get dehydrated or to be in pain.  I figured the ENT would call in a suppository or something.

He explained that there wasn't much wiggle room with his size and weight, that he would get dehydrated quickly.  He needed a second IV for the day.  "You're not overreacting.  I can't do this over the phone," the doctor said.

By 8:30, my son was whimpering, his teeth clattering as his whole body shook in pain and fear and utter discomfort.  He cried out and squeezed my hand as the nurses deftly slid a new IV catheter into his small, artificially-numbed hand. 

All I could do was watch and grit my teeth. 

He was discharged a few hours later but started to vomit again before we'd even gotten to the parking lot of the hospital.  IV number three came a little while later, after more vomiting and an abdominal x-ray.  This time there was no numbing cream.  I am grateful to the pediatric ER nurses for knowing how to do this quickly. 

He was eventually admitted to the hospital for two nights and was happily at home playing Minecraft by Friday afternoon. 

But it was horrible watching my young son in so much pain.  I can't imagine how vomiting felt after a tonsillectomy, especially when he'd effectively had no pain medicine for about eight hours.  The terror of not knowing when it would end, of not knowing if he would ever feel better... it was wretched.  All I could do was sing to him and let him squeeze my strong, warm hand with his tiny, trembling one, while I stroked his hair and whispered that it would be okay very soon. 

I was thankful to have the outlet of friends by text and Facebook to vent quietly away from him.  They knew I was all but paralyzed with terror, though I don't think he had any clue. 

I wrote on Tuesday night about how I was worried about this procedure.  I'm not a worrier usually, and I'm convinced it was my psycho senses prepping me for what was to come.  I didn't know then what it would be, but I could sense that something wouldn't go right. 

Thankfully we were able to come home on Friday, still on oral Zofran and pain meds.  He slept for eleven hours last night, in his own, safe bed.  He'd originally said he wanted to sleep with me but then changed his mind at the last minute.  I was still close enough that I could hear him if he needed me.  He was quiet until he woke this morning, whining in throat pain.  This was the part I'd expected.  This was the recovery I'd planned for.  This part sucks but is easier than the other. 

Thank you to everyone who said a prayer and a wish and a good thought for my baby.  Thank you to Children's Hospital of Atlanta at Scottish Rite for having an amazing, caring, anticipating staff.    This week has sucked but is already better, and I couldn't have gotten through this mentally and emotionally intact were it not for so much support. 

Rip, rip, we're gonna rip 'em out now.

Tomorrow my youngest son goes into surgery for a tonsillectomy.  I'm a little freaked out.

Like his older brother, he's battled chronic strep for a while.  They were both born with huge tonsils that just love to incubate streptococcus.  He was supposed to have this procedure done over the summer but came down with strep the night before surgery.  (Of course he did!)  So now we're having to pull him out of school for a couple of weeks, in the hope that we get these golf-ball-sized tonsils out well ahead of strep season.

And I'm not worried about the procedure, per se.  We have a great ENT, who actually put my son's second set of tubes in five years ago—the same day he performed my older son's tonsillectomy.  He has an excellent staff, and I'm sure everything will go as smoothly as possible. 

But it is nerve-wracking at best to have your child away from you, under anesthesia and under the proverbial knife (in this case, a laser), where you absolutely cannot see or touch or hear them, where you can't be near them at all.  They're going through a mildly traumatizing procedure that has a painful, nasty recovery for the next two weeks.  You want to be there, to hold their hand and sing to them and comfort them through every moment of it, but you just can't.

It sucks.  Really.

I know I should be thankful that it's not something worse.  I am, truly.  I am thankful every day that my children are healthy and strong and generally happy little boys, who've never had to experience the pain and suffering that so many others have.  Like every parent, I am afraid of terrible things happening to my child.  Every night, as I fall asleep, I am relieved to have survived another day with my beautiful babies, oblivious to the first-hand knowledge of agony that so many others regularly endure.

Almost from the moment your children come into your life, you have horrible, dreadful thoughts of the wretched things that could befall your most precious gifts.  When they're infants, you're overwhelmed by the task of just keeping the freakin' baby alive for the first few days and weeks.  But then these terrible images creep into your mind of what could go wrong.  Sickness.  Injury.  Madmen and psychopaths.  It can be paralyzing.  You don't mean to think these things, but it's unavoidable.  It's your brain's way of running through the endless list of possibilities to determine what is plausibility. 

So I've spent the last few hours freaking out because my baby is going to be where I can't reach him, where it's not plausible, but totally possible, that something could go wrong.  And he will be in pain, and he will cry, and I'm the one who chose to bring him to this place to have this thing done to him. 

In those moments of utter dread and tearful guilt, it doesn't matter that I know it's for the best.  The heartstrings that attach him to me are straining painfully in their tautness.  My baby will be in pain, and I made that happen. 

This sucks, too.

I have to remind myself to breathe deeply around the pounding constriction that squeezes my heart into my throat and my gut.  I have to remind myself that it's worse for him to constantly be sick and on antibiotics.  I have to remind myself that he won't blame me for this later. 

So tomorrow we'll go into the surgery center, and I will sit with him and sing to him and hold his hand under his favorite blanket until it's time to walk him to the doors of the operating suite.  Then I will kiss him and remind him that I'll be waiting patiently in the recovery room for him, ready to hold his hand and tuck his blanket around him as soon as he wakes up. 

And then I will freak the fuck out.  Just for a moment.

'Cause I have to get it together again before they wheel him back to me.  I have to be the smiling calm one that he sees when he wakes, cranky and in pain.  I have to be the one who patiently holds his popsicle while he eats it. 

That's my job.  That's what I signed up to do when I decided to have my babies.  I promised to be the calm one, to be the steadfast one, to be the parent, even when it makes me want to freak out and hide under a blanket with my own popsicle. 

Tomorrow night, I will go to sleep just a few feet from my baby, relieved that we survived this, that we are home and on our way to healthy again.  And I will be thankful that we have the opportunity for at least one more day, happy and oblivious to what else there could be. 

I thought I knew exactly what scared me and I would never have to run again.

I am freaking the fuck out. 

I wrote earlier this week about how I was irritable, tired of sitting around doing nothing and worried about the results of this latest surgery.  Some of that abated when I talked to Tiff and cried for half an hour. 

"What if I hate it?" I wailed.  "I was really lucky with the first two surgeries and got these amazing results.  What if my luck runs out and my thighs just look mostly the same after all of this?"

"What if?" Tiff countered.  "What would you do then?"

"Be unhappy?  End up on an episode of Plastic Surgery Disasters or Dr. Phil."

"Your surgeon won't let that happen, Stephanie.  She wants you to be happy with all of this.  She would never let her own reputation be damaged by a thigh lift, especially not the one she did on her very favoritest patient."

As usual, Tiff was right.  (She's a smart person.  Don't you think she'd know if she were wrong?)  Yes, they're still swollen and puffy, and the skin still has to retract after the lipo—which was a horribly violent procedure in its own right, as Mandypants pointed out that afternoon.  It will take weeks for them to heal fully.

And it's not like my surgeon made some quick incision and then sewed me up, just to make me think she did what I wanted.  She removed roughly forty square inches of skin from my thighs, sucked out a bunch of fat, and stitched me back together. 

She knows intimately all of the work that went into changing my body and my health, that led to my finding her for this series of procedures.  Like most plastic surgeons, she's a perfectionist (tinkering with OCD?).  As my nurse said today, my surgeon would die a thousand deaths before she would let me be unhappy with this or feel like it was botched in some way. 

And I have no reason to think it will be messed up.  It's totally irrational.  But I've been freaking out about this surgery much, much more than I did about the others.  In theory, this is the easiest of the three procedures, by far.  It's the longest incisions, but there's no muscle involvement.  It was four hours—less than originally anticipated, which was already planned to be the shortest anyway. 

Last night, I emailed a picture and a video to Tiff, of my thighs.  I was sitting in the recliner, looking at how the skin and fat and muscle spread across the upholstery.  They do look less dimply and saggy, though they also still look thunderous when I'm sitting. 

"That's just thigh, Stephanie," Tiff said to me this morning.  "They just spread when you sit."

"Really?  Everyone's do that?"

"Yes.  Your thighs are perfectly normal and natural.  Watch The Talented Mr. Ripley.  You'll see Gwyneth Paltrow's cellulite.  You'll see.  It's all of us."

Here's the thing: I don't know what normal looks like.  It's not like I was a normal girl who got fat and then normal again.  I've never been skinny.  I have absolutely no frame of reference for what's normal.

I've spent a lot of time looking at other women's bodies, over the last year.  It's not a matter of seeing how I want to look, or what I think I should look like.  It's been about seeing how the human female form is put together.  How does the hip meet the thigh?  How do hip bones look on not-fat women?  How much tummy bulge is average?

So now I'm trying to figure out my own body in that same regard.  Do my hips curve at the "right" place?  Do my breasts hug my ribcage like a regular woman?  Are my hip bones too pokey?

I honestly have no idea.  I can barely compare this body to my last, let alone to another woman's.  I know I'm about a size 8-10 now, but it's almost impossible for me to hold up a piece of clothing and judge if it's an appropriate size, simply by its cut and shape.  Almost invariably, I still pick the too-big one, thinking it's the one that will fit. 

I'm trying to stay calm.  This is the last one, right?  But for some reason, I have been on edge about it for two weeks.  My surgeon and I discussed it while she Sharpied me before going into the OR. 

• Maybe it's because I know it's almost done. 
• Maybe it's because I'm afraid I don't deserve this. 
• Maybe it's because I'm afraid it won't matter, that I'll still never really get it, in my head, that I'm not that same girl anymore. 
• And if I don't have the thighs to hide behind, what is there to keep people and their emotions and their sometimes hurt at bay?    

I hid behind the fat and the food and the sadness of it all for years, to keep people from hurting me again and more.  In the end, I was hurting myself more than almost anyone else ever could.  But if I finally let down that guard, if I'm finally able to just be normal, what then?  Will I get hurt again?  Will something horrible happen that undoes all of the good? 

I don't know, but it's completely possible.  It's as likely as not that some external force inflicts damage on me again, when I least expect it.  Maybe with laws of averages, I've already had my share, but I'm hardly an average girl—it's more than plausible that it could happen. 

And it's not like me to worry about such things.  That's just life, I know, and I usually try not to overact, or to react at all until necessary.  I've done so much work in the last two years, inside and out, that I know I have the tools to handle whatever comes up.  But it's really easy to slip back into the fat girl mindset, and I'm afraid of that.  I'm afraid of being that fat girl again. 

So I'm sitting here now, crying my eyes out, surprised that all of this even came to the surface.  I wasn't sure where I was going when I started writing tonight, but here we are.  Thanks for bearing with me and letting me talk it out.  Thanks for being beside me on this journey.  Maybe next time, I'll let you pick the music. 

 

Having faith is the hardest thing to do.

So it turns out I'm a terrible patient. 

Less than a week after surgery, I'm bored out of my ever-loving mind.  I've spent days cooped up in the recliner, impossibly happy when I was able to move to the bed for a while.  I went for my first post-op visit this morning.  Bandage free, though still covered in surgical tape, I was able to get my first shower in days. 

Really, I shouldn't be so delighted by Dial soap. 

I'm being good—doing everything my surgeon and my nurses said to do and not to do.  I'm also eating anything that comes within five feet of my gullet.  Stress and boredom are the worst possible triggers for a compulsive eater. 

The first few hours in the Perocet coma were kind of enjoyable.  There was a reason to rest and let my mind wander.  But eventually I started to sleep in thirty second spurts, interrupted by two minutes of groggy lucidity that would fall straight away into resumption of the dream I'd just left a few moments before.  For two days, I witnessed both what was going on around me and what was in my head, simultaneously.   All from the padded cell of my recliner. 

I have watched a lot of movies and television.  I couldn't read much, unable to focus on the type and the words.  It feels in part like I've wasted time that could've been used productively on anything else.  But I know my body needed the time to rest and heal from the assault I just paid my surgeon a few thousand dollars to perform. 

I'm still swollen and puffy, and my thighs don't really look any smaller today than they did a week ago.  I know she removed about 600 grams of flesh (just over a pound for the demons, I suppose) in four big patches.  My nurses assure me it will all look different very soon.  But all of those nagging worries and insecurities started to creep in again, around the haze of anesthesia, to taunt me with their whispers of "mistake" and "useless" and "what the hell did you do?"

It's made me gripey and agitated and irritable, to say the least.  Add the boredom and frustration of being still, and I'm a bit of a bear right now.  Special thanks goes to DH and the boys for being so sweet and caring through all of this.  I have wanted for nothing, except maybe a cookie for the fat girl.

Having been through this a couple of times, I know I'll be delighted in a few weeks, completely enthralled by the genius of my plastic surgeon.  Once the swelling subsides and the drain tubes are gone, I'll be ecstatic that I made the choice to do this, again.  But the waiting is killing me. 

I don't wanna have to wear that suit of skin.

I'm a little over a day away from what should be my last plastic surgery procedure, post weight loss.  I'm nervous as hell. 

This part of the journey started a few months ago, when I couldn't stand to look at the loose skin left over from the 115 pound loss.  I chose my surgeon carefully and started the process of what would be three lengthy procedures and recovery.

The first surgery was February 1, 2012.  In about seven hours, my surgeon removed 14+ inches of skin from my belly and hips, tightened up my abs, did some preliminary lipo on my thighs, and liposucked my chin.  The incision runs almost all the way around my body. 

The second surgery was April 25^th.  She removed the bagging skin from under my arms.  The incisions start just above my elbow and run along my inner arms, past my armpits, down just under the edge of my bra.  They're still red and a little raised but are mostly hidden when my arms are down.  She also did a full breast lift and augmentation.  In two years, I went from a 42DD to a 36DDD.  The implants are 90% settled.  Most of those scars have faded already.  And, yes, they look and feel quite natural.  Six hours.

The last procedure will be on August 1^st—six months to the day after the first one.  It's a thigh lift, both inner and outer, with some extra lipo to help sculpt the thighs.  This is expected to last about five hours.  

I'm so damn ready for this. 

It's crazy to see my body now.  When I went for my pre-op appointment last week, I saw the before pictures from my last surgery.  I was shocked.  Seeing the me from just three months before felt like looking at the pastiest National Geographic refugee ever.  It was bizarre to remember how my body felt with the extra baggage.  It already seems like a lifetime ago. 

And the new body isn't perfect.  I didn't expect it to be.  I expected it to be natural and much more representative of how I thought of myself and how I wanted to see myself in the mirror.  There are scars and stretch marks and imperfections, and I'm incredibly pleased with all of it.  I would do it again in a heartbeat—regardless of the pain and the minor complications after. 

What I found through all of this is that I'm strong—much, much stronger than I ever realized or gave myself credit for being.  I knew I could do a lot.  I'm a force of nature, after all.  I've been through a lot of crap in my life, but this has been like none of that.  This was totally voluntary and totally necessary for me.  It has been a blessing of challenges and tests to see what I could do and how I would handle it. 

I don't know what's coming next.  I'm a month away from turning 40, and I intend to enjoy every second of it.  I will go into that next stage of my life with a whole new perception of myself, both inside and out. 

So cross your fingers that all goes well.  I'm back in the hands of my incomparable surgeon and her incredible staff.  And I have a fresh pedicure for the event.

I drop to my knees for a pair of DDs.

At this time a week from now, I'll be coming out of recovery from my second plastic surgery and moving into my overnight room.  It's been less than three months since I had the body lift and some lipo in prep for my third and final surgery in August.  This time, I'm going in for brachioplasty and mastopexy. 

Basically, I'm getting rid of the bat wings and redoing my boobs. 

My elder son said to me a few months ago, "I hear you're gonna get your bat wings cut off."

"I might," I replied.  "That's what I'm planning."

"But how will you fly me to school?" he asked sardonically.

"Don't worry.  I'll still have my broomstick."

"Yeah, you might wanna get that removed, too."

Had he not been laughing as this unfolded, he would not have seen his eleventh birthday.

Every woman I know complains about her bat wings.  Some women call them angel wings, but I find that to be insipid.  But to have that excess skin removed means a very, very lengthy scar, running along the underside of each arm from just above my elbow to below the armpit.  My surgeon will also do a little lipo on the remaining back bulge and tighten that skin.  It'll be nice to not have to wear a back-smoothing bra. 

But the biggest part of this surgery, for me, is the boob job.  It's a lift and augmentation.  They're bringing them higher and making them bigger.  I opted for silicone gel, rather than saline, which goes under the pectoral muscle.  Based on both what my surgical team has told me and on the feedback from women who've had the same type of work, there's a very strong likelihood that my new breasts will look and feel natural. 

One of my nurses offered that, the way the procedure's done, I could even breastfeed again, if I wanted. 

Going through all of this and having another baby would be like buying a really nice car and driving it straight into a lake. 

In the last eighteen months or so, as I lost the 115 pounds, I went from a 42DD to a 36C/D.  I had also breastfed my children for just over a year each.  I was into a G cup when I was fully engorged. 

Needless to say, there's a lot of loose skin. 

I can A) live with it; B) surgically install coin purses between my breasts and armpits; or C) fill 'er up.

I debated just doing the lift, the mastopexy, without the added boobage.  My surgeon reminded me that I'd always been a busty girl—fully into a D cup by the time I was 14—and that just the lift would probably bring me to a B.  Nonononono!  That simply will not do. 

I'm an Amazon, undoubtedly.  I have a very large frame, with big feet and man hands and linebacker shoulders.  And no matter how big I was, I was always the busty blonde.  It's just part of my identity, both as I see myself and as others see me.  I could be loud and bawdy and flirty behind that shield, at once both alluring and obviating.

And breasts are a fascinating thing.  Like all gender-specific organs, they are simultaneously sexual and life-giving.  They are representative of both Madonna and whore, and most women find their confidence somewhere in between.

I decided to maintain that bit of self-assurance and return my breasts to their own happy medium. 

No, I don't know what my new cup size will be.  Implants aren't sized that way.  You have to choose them based on CCs of volume, which is added on to the naturally-occurring structure.  Adding 400 CCs of saline or silicone to an A cup is very different than adding it to a C cup. 

There was a process of literally trying them on, of wearing a stretched-out sports bra and plopping them over my natural breasts.  I've given my surgeon a narrow range of size that's acceptable to me, not too small but not too large.  And I did try on some really big ones, just to see what it would be like.  With the new, smaller waist, I looked like a Barbie doll.  I could tell immediately that clothes wouldn't fit correctly and that they may just be too damn heavy, even with my broad shoulders and strong back.  Worse, they looked and felt cumbersome.  I've already spent years maneuvering around a body that felt too big; I wasn't replacing one annoyance for another. 

So I'll go in next week for another seven hour procedure.  Parts of me will be bigger and parts will be smaller.  It will hurt and require a few weeks of recovery and incision care and scar recovery.  I'm okay with all of that.

A few weeks later, I'll have to go bra shopping.  Again.  But I'll have to remember to carry my purse, 'cause there won't be any extra skin to hold my money. 

 

P.S.

On advice of my OB/GYN, I had a pre-construction mammogram last week.  I'm almost 40, and it was time.  If you or someone you know is due for the test, call now and schedule.  It's really not a big deal, and it just might save your life. 

I feel forever new.

It's been almost three weeks since my surgery—the first of my plastics procedures to remove the excess skin and fat since abandoning the 110 pounds.  The surgery took seven hours, which is the longest I've ever been under anesthesia.  The surgeon performed an extended abdominoplasty, a tummy tuck combined with a bit of a lower body lift.  She also did some lipo on my chin and my thighs, prepping for a medial thigh lift that will come in a few months.  She said there really wasn't much fat to suck out of my thighs, attributing it to all the hard work I'd done over the previous fifteen months.  In total, she took five pounds and fourteen inches of skin, leaving me with an incision that's three inches shy of running completely around my body.

The weirdest part was that I got a new belly button.  It was strange to see it, raw and inflamed, after a week of recovery.  (I was bound in compression garments and bandages, unable to see anything or even shower for the first week afterward.)  It's the same original hole, I guess, with new skin stretched across and through it.  It's a lovely belly button, but it's not mine.

 And I really liked my old one.  It was ridiculously deep—I'd often put a marble in it just for decoration—and quite lovely.  This one will be beautiful once it full heals, but it's strange and foreign to me.  I mean, your belly button is one of the first body parts you make.  Any parent knows it's a big deal when their baby finds their belly button.  It's a sweet, intimate part of a child.  My mom was a little surprised to learn the one she'd given me was gone. 

It's also been strange to be out of the gym for the past three weeks.  I haven't not worked out for so long in months, and I feel the pull to be back.  I'm ready to be moving again.  Hopefully, I'll be released for the treadmill this week, though I know it's another three weeks until I can work with my trainer again.  He expects it to take four-to-six weeks to get back to where I was before the procedure.

There's still a little swelling in my abdomen, and my thighs are still a bit sore from the lipo.  But the swelling gets better every day.  I'll be in these damn compression garments for another three weeks, to help the skin retract and to support the underlying muscles as they heal.  I have a very defined waist now, and my belly is flat.  I don't remember it ever having been so flat in my entire life. 

Yes, the pain during recovery was severe.  I was on heavy narcotics every four hours for days after, and they took their own toll on my system.  Neither of my births was C-sections, so I can't be sure how similar the discomfort was.  I can say that I felt like I'd been in a horrible car wreck, stiff and sore for several days.  Coughing was sheer agony, and I tried to contain it until my pain medication had time to kick in.  I really questioned a couple of days after if I'd done the right thing, if I'd maimed myself horribly.  Two weeks later, seeing the first real results of the surgery, I knew I'd absolutely made the right choice for me. 

Even with the layers of extra garments, my old jeans are a little big in the butt.  I can't buy new ones until I'm fully healed.  Yesterday, I tried on a little blue dress I hadn't worn in a while.  The last time I wore it, I needed a Spanx to help corral Medusa.  Now, it's a bit baggy where the beast used to be. 

About nine years ago, I found grown-up Wonder Woman underoos: a red, tight t-shirt and blue-starred panties.  They were a juniors XL, and there was no hope in Hell of fitting my ass into them.  I loved them, though, and I held onto them, waiting for the day they would fit like I wanted. 

Last night, I pulled them out of my drawer, just to see.  It was good.  I was joyously dancing in front of the bathroom mirror, admiring the expertise of my amazing plastic surgeon.  She told me in recovery that I'd be thrilled with the results, and she was totally right. 

When I was so sick from the medication, I questioned whether or not I was still willing to go on and have the other work done in a few months.  A week later, the answer is a resounding YES!  It's not a perfect body, by any means, but it's starting to look like I think it should, how I picture it when I think of myself. 

I didn't do this for anyone but me, and I'm glad I did.  DH certainly will benefit in his own way from my new body, and he's especially excited about the Wonder Woman panties.  Mostly he's thrilled to see the beginnings of my new self-confidence.  I'm excited, too, knowing one more piece of my puzzle has dropped into place.