Second procedure to treat Lipedema

I am so so sorry for the lack of posts lately but last year was truely a busy one for me. I won’t bore you with the details, but please know that 2016 was one helluva busy year, and now, during the somewhat calm period of 2017 I am using this time to do an update on my progress since I know 2017 is going to be just as busy, if not more!

The last time I wrote was in 2015 to give some insight on my incision scars and how they’ve healed. Since then, I returned to Dr Rapprich for a second round of tumescent liposuction surgery to treat Lipedema. Please note that the following procedure occurred in August 2015.

So! First thing’s first — WHY did I go back for another round of surgery? Good question. Well, I suppose I really could have left my body the way it is, and I am by no means unappreciative of the results I had. However, when I first went for the consultation with Dr Rapprich, we both agreed that the safest first manoeuvre was to be conservative in how much fat was removed — better safe than sorry, right? And I’m sure I would have left things as they were, however, due to good fortune I found myself with enough money to be able to afford the surgery again. So it was a matter of choice — pay off some debt, go on a holiday and spoil myself a little or; have some more surgery performed to treat Lipedema?

Having grown up being very slim and skinny, life took a rather dramatic turn when Lipedema started to develop in my teens. In that most insecure and emotionally vulnerable period of my life I had suddenly become the skinny girl with a fat secret. I had to dress accordingly, hide my legs and really alter my life in a way so I could maintain my former identity of being skinny. This insecure has sadly never left me and I am still quietly worried about the imbalance between my upper and lower half.

So I booked myself in for another round of surgery with Dr Rapprich. Coincidentally, around the same time I received an email from someone who had discovered this blog (Hello N!). After a few email and Skype exchanges, we agreed that we could go to Frankfurt, live together, and have the surgery performed on the same day.

We hired an AirBnB in Frankfurt city for the week. What I found super funny was, just outside our apartment building in the middle of the city, was this statue of a woman with large Lipedema-looking legs!

The clinic is located in Bad Soden am Taunus, about a half an hour train ride from Frankfurt city (I can strongly recommend using public transport in Germany, it’s excellent!). It is a modern and new building that is clearly of a higher quality standard than a public hospital. The clinic itself is located near the entrance, it is small and quaint but also very modern and squeaky clean! I felt like I was in good hands.

Well, there’s really not that much I can say about the surgery that I haven’t already covered in my previous post. Things went very much in a similar fashion, the only difference being that this time I was also having my upper calves done. In total I had the following areas treated: lower calves, upper calves, outer thighs and buttocks.

The surgery went by so well that I literally walked out of the operating room and straight into the waiting area as I waited for my Lipedema buddy to go in for her surgery. Since it took some time, I was even able to walk down to the hospitals cafeteria and get myself some lunch — strange to think I had just had surgery! After lunch, I took a walk around the hospital and took some of the following pictures for your viewing pleasure:

And so, for the next 4 days my Lipedema buddy and I took care of each other, assisting each other in changes bandages and dressing, with blood-thinning injections (okay, so she only helped me with that since I can’t even look at needles!) and general day-to-day support post-liposuction surgery.

Thus concludes my SECOND procedure to treat lipedema with tumescent liposuction. This operation was conducted in August 2015, and to those who are interested, I will be doing my THIRD and hopefully FINAL procedure next month. I will be writing up a blog about that too.

Before & After Lipedema Liposuction Pictures

Hi again! Here comes a mega-late update, for which I am so sorry but once again life was successful at doing what it does. Anyway please refer to the following pictures. The picture to the left is a picture taken JUST before my surgery and the picture to the right was taken this afternoon.

UPDATE! I will be returning to Dr Rapprich to have additional surgery made to my upper calves and hips again. The appointment is scheduled in September this year so I really have to start saving again! Please feel free to ask me questions in the comments. I am also available to talk on Skype if you are so inclined.

Oh and by the way, should you happen to contact Dr Rapprich please feel free to tell him about my blog and whether or not it has been of any use to you! 🙂

Post-op tumescent liposuction to treat Stage 1 Lipedema

Well I’m not going to sugar coat it for you ladies, post-op tumescent liposuction stinks! And I don’t mean that figuratively either, I mean…it really does stink!

Once I was wheeled back into my room, I was greeted by my super loving and supportive partner who welcomed me back with a bunch of roses. We sat and chatted in the room for a while, me describing at length all the gory details while a painkiller drip was inserted into my arm (which, might I add, was not morphine). Almost immediately after being put back in my room I wanted to walk around – and more importantly – see the results but since I was so bandaged up that wasn’t really going to happen.

Anyway, with my surgical procedure my incisions weren’t stitched back up, rather they were left open so they could weep out excess fluid. And weep, ladies and gentlemen, they did. Incredibly much.

It’s not so much the weeping part I mind so much as the unpleasant smell. I imagine most of the fluid coming out was the saline solution mixed with anesthesia mixed with some blood – not a particularly wholesome cocktail let me tell you!

After about 45 minutes I walked to the toilet, and a little around my room. I feel like I peed more than usual too but I can’t say for sure since I usually pee a lot anyway! Getting up and sitting down was a struggle and I could only walk very slowly and like an old cowboy but it felt good to walk.

I had lunch shortly afterwards and spent the rest of the afternoon either laying in bed, wanting to get up and walk or limping around my room, or going to the toilet.

I was given antibiotics to take with dinner and breakfast, which I will have to take until they run out (approx. 10 days) and then the part I wasn’t informed of! The blood thinning injections! I imagine this is some sort of preventative measure for Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) but geez I wish someone woulda told me beforehand so I could have prepared myself! I hate needles at the best of times and this needle really hurts. It has to be injected into my stomach every day for 10 days. Yay. 😦

After dinner the nurse came in and changed my bandages, which smelt horrific and made me self-conscious but it was nice to feel “changed”.

That night it was difficult to sleep because I didn’t want to turn on my sides for fear of disrupting the leakages but after struggling until 3am, I eventually gave in and rolled over. I fell asleep instantly. Prior to that I had buzzed for a nurse to change my bandages again since they were wet, smelly and uncomfortable.

My tumescent liposuction surgery to treat Stage 1 Lipedema

I’m in hospital, post-op as I write this so please excuse any errors which I will fix  when I return home. I thought I’d post this ASAP since I’m impatient and want to get this information out there! Pictures will also be added later when I’m home.

So, where do I begin? After some major complications with a cancelled flight to Frankfurt, I eventually ended up there after three connecting, and all delayed flights! I had to book a hotel in Frankfurt since I didn’t want to spend my sleeping time on a train to Landstuhl and ended up taking a 5:55 train I arrived at 8 and walked directly to the hospital.

I signed in, filled out a form. Waited very briefly in a waiting room and was summoned to my hospital room where I am now. Dr Rapprich came in. He’s a very nice person; smart, handsome and wholesome – precisely the kind of person you want performing surgery on you – and we talked about my Lipedema. He said it was very good I am treating it in the early stages so as to avoid complications that would otherwise await me in future. He marked my lower calves, even though I suggested my entire calf was the problem but he was convinced it was muscle, not fat there so who am I to judge?

I dressed in the garment and ate some breakfast since I didn’t manage to have any in the morning and apparently it’s important to eat – so keep that in mind ladies! Finally a doctor came in and whisked me away into the operating theatre. By this stage I was incredibly nervous, almost on the verge of tears. It was also very cold in the place and I was shivering, but I think I was also shivering from fear. I don’t like hospitals at the best of times, let alone for my own surgery but the nurses and Dr Rapprich were super nice and relaxed, Dr Rapprich even assured me that he would give me some “Cloud 9” to relax me. 🙂

I was injected with the “Cloud 9” and it did calm me. I didn’t feel dizzy or drunk or anything at all, just really relaxed, and then came the not-so fun injections; local anaesthesia. Dr Rapprich called them “mosquito bites” however I’d be more inclined to call them bullant bites! I received quite a few of those, whincing and twitching a few times but I was glad once it was over.

Then came the tumescent liquid injections. This was basically an octopus-like device with several tubes connected to needles at the end. Dr Rapprich pricked the needles in (maybe 5 at a time but I’m not sure) my calves and the water was injected. I couldn’t really feel too much but occasionally it did hurt since the anaesthesia was still fresh. More injections of water in my inner and outer thighs; turning to the left, turning to the right. It wasn’t painful, just a little uncomfortable since I could feel my skin begin to swell from the pressure of the water filling underneath my skin.

Once the water part was over I looked down at my legs and it was quite a shock to see the swelling! All the areas where the water had been injected was swollen like a balloon and as pale as paper to boot. It was weird to look at and there was some discomfort from the pressure but nothing intolerable. Next everyone vacated the room and told me to lay back and wait for the water to dilute with the anaesthesia, and they would be back after an hour. I was pretty tired so fell into a semi-sleep.

After an hour they returned and it was time for the actual liposuction. I didn’t even feel Dr Rapprich make the small incisions at the bottom of my calves and once he had the cannula ready he told me that it was time for the procedure. So he started. I can’t describe how it feels because it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before but I suppose the only thing I really “felt” was the vibrations of the cannula. It literally felt like a vibrator going up and down under my skin but with some discomfort. There was one or two points where he hit a skin nerve and I flinched a little from pain but overall, nothing too painful – just uncomfortable. He did the front of my calves, my sides and then I had to go on my stomach so he could do the back. When I was on my stomach I had to flex my calves by resting my legs on my toes, that hurt a little more than anywhere else but it wasn’t intolerable.

Then it was time to operate on my inner thighs (this was elective surgery for cosmetic reasons only)’ which didn’t take very long but was rather uncomfortable from the vibrations being in such a sensitive spot, all the while occurring only under my skin. Once that was over Dr. Rapprich worked on my outer thighs, even turning me on my stomach where I could watch the bag fill with my fat. Yuck!

During the procedure the head of the hospital lymphatic department, Dr Jung, came in and watched Dr Rapprich work his magic. It felt strange being watched like that but also somewhat comforting since everyone seemed very casual and relaxed and I felt like I was in good hands.  Once it was over, I asked to see what had come out of me and in total 1.2L of gunk was removed from from my body. I even teared up a little looking at that bag of fat since it was the source of many years of personal anguish. Instead of crying I asked Dr Rapprich to take a picture of it and smiled as I saw it being cast away into the waste bin. Take THAT Lipedema!

All in all the procedure was over in three hours, 1 hour break time included. I must admit, the weirdest part of it all was when I was asked to stand up for final inspection – and this is where it gets funky. Once I stood up, Dr Rapprich kneeled before my calves and gave them a final inspection and then – wait for it – pressed both hands across the top of each calf while pressing to drag his hands down the entirety of my calves, directing the excess fluid to exit out of the incision marks around my ankles. Whilst I didn’t really feel any of it, I couldn’t look down because it all seemed a little too gross and weird for me.

I then had small bandages places over my incision marks and adorned in an ankle to waist compression garment, with compression socks over the top. Just before I was covered up I managed to spot a glimpse at my legs and saw a sight I had not seen since childhood – ankles! I couldn’t help but smile profusely. I was then bandaged over the compression garments quite tightly, placed back in my bed and wheeled back to my room.

And so it was done.