Am a 54 yr old male, 183 cm and over the last few years allowed my weight to creep up to 111 kilo.
That was uncomfortable! So I decided to lose weight.
And I did, in 3 months I dropped 22 kilo basically an atkins type diet and rstricted calorie intake But… I never had a single good reaction from my friends when I returned home ( I have worked overseas for years)
Now health wise I felt great. But I ended up with a lot of chicken skin around my neck and I dio look sallow and maybe too skinny.
I have always found it hard to build muscle even though I have been using free weights so cant seem to fill out my now too big skin covering!
So I Am going for a neck lift, and middle face lift. I understand the operation will last 7 hours ( Oh because the surgeon said he will also remove the excess fat above and below my eyes!! I didn’t actually notice that myself)
Now I am generally quite comfortable with my lines and wrinkles and I don’t want to look like a youngster, I just want to get rid of this loose skin that gives my neck the appearance of a turkey!
So has anyone any experience of this type of op? If there is sufficient interest I guess I can put up some before, during and after pics.
I guess the main message is dont allow yourselves to pile on too much weight folks because when you lose it your skin may not be too forgiving
If you smoke, quit and stay quit until after you’re done healing. It can and it will affect the healing rate and success. If you’ve got the willpower to drop that weight in that time frame you’ve go the willpower to stay off the cigs until you heal.
Choose your doctor carefully.
Follow any and all after care instructions to the letter.
Don’t plan to go back to work/regular activities too soon - you need to allow yourself adequate rest to heal properly.
Hmm… trust the dopers to hit my Achilles heel on the first post. Yes smoking is a vice I still need to work on.
I also only have a narrow window to do this op (2 weeks to be precise). And I also need some dental work completed when I leave Korea and go back to my adopted home in Manila
I don’t mind going back out in public looking as if I have done a few rounds with Iron Mike, and the doc said that as part of the package after three months when everything has settled down they will do some botox treatment. ( I don’t think am gonna let that happen !) So I think I can manage it in my 2 week window.
I know I need to stop my cardio aspirin. I will stop smoking also for 2 weeks before the op ( hope I can keep that up too)
But how do they cope with doing a 7 hour op> do they move your body position? I regularly do 7 to 12 hour flights back to the Middle East or Europe. I couldn’t keep still for that long even if I was sedated with a racehorse dosage of ketamine
I have never heard of a plastic surgeon who would do a facelift on a patient who smokes or is exposed to secondhand smoke. It’s too risky. You have to stop smoking at least a month before surgery, perhaps more.
Although he never said it straight out, I got the picture that my plastic surgeon would not agree to my breast reduction if I had been a smoker. In fact, more than a handful of times, I had to verify that I was not a smoker, nor was anyone with whom I shared living space.
Okay since these posts came out overwhelmingly negative about smoking, I haven’t smoked. My surgeon however, didn’t speak about that too much.
I have previously had a kidney removed through cancer and already had a heart attack complicated with ventricular fibrillation so he was more concerned ( I guess) with getting clearance from a cardiologist. Which I will do.
But apart from the “smoking is bad m’kay” what are the significant risks to this operation?
Sorry, missed the edit window. what I want to know is how exactly does smoking present a risk to anesthesia, bleeding and recovery. Christ on a stick I think am dumb sometimes.