Brachioplasty and Abdominoplasty are not for the weak. Especially at the same time. I wish someone would have told me just how challenging these two procedures combined would be.

The next day was pretty rough. I couldn’t move without assistance. Doing a tummy-tuck and an arm lift at the same time is a lot. Not only can you not use your core, but you can’t use your arms at all, and without assistance, you are pretty much incapable of doing anything. The ace bandages on my arms were unraveling, and it is now 10:00 AM, and my doctor has yet to come to my room, and I was all types of crazy at this point. 

He removes my ace bandages and removes the tubes in my arms that were placed there to drain liquid, clean the wounds, and place my compression sleeves on my arms. As he is placing the sleeves on my arms, I tell him that they are way too small, and he disregards my concerns and continues to place the compression sleeves on my arms. When I tell you I almost fainted from the pain, I am not exaggerating at all. I am now sent back to my apartment to heal with my nurse, and the journey begins. 

Listen, this surgery is not for the weak, and this should not be taken lightly. Everyone has a different experience, and there wasn’t enough preparation I could have done to help me with this recovery process. I was miserable, no appetite for anything healthy, and all I wanted was comfort food. 

After about forty-eight hours, I noticed my arms were really swollen, and the compression sleeves were cutting into my incision under my arm. I advised the doctor but was met with no response. I called his assistant, who was always a call away and very helpful through this ordeal, and she told me to remove the compression sleeves and scheduled me for an appointment to see him.

I was in pain, and the pain medications in the Dominican Republic, in my opinion, don’t work. I now have no feeling in my arms, and they are so swollen, my back hurts from having to keep myself down, and I am in a really delicate space mentally. Everything bothered me, and depression was creeping in, and I was just not happy. 

INCISIONS UNDER MY ARMS OPEN 

As my nurse was wiping me down, she noticed that the incisions under both of my arms opened up and immediately notified the doctor. Mind you, I had just gone to his office the day before, and he did not notice that at all. All I kept hearing was this is normal and something that happens, but I was clear that because I was given compression sleeves that were too tight and cutting under my arms, that was one of the reasons why I had these open incisions under my arms. Did I mention that surgery is not for the weak? Well, I will continue to remind you through this blog and every blog I write on cosmetic surgery because it’s not. 

The doctor prescribes me an antibiotic powder to place under my arms directly on my incisions, tells me to keep the compressions on, and sends me home. This made the incisions worst as they kept opening, and my arms were getting more and more swollen, and I was in so much pain and was tired of hearing so normal over and over again.

Firstly, this technique should be done by an expert. This doctor was a board-certified plastic surgeon and had immaculate reviews, but not in a Brachioplasty, and I should have made sure to go to someone that was. The arms are complicated and one of the most painful procedures, in my opinion. 

I started to notice that my incisions were looking bad, and I was worried about an infection, so I sent him a message, and he called me right away only to bash me for not keeping my arms still and accused me of moving them, and that was the reason why my incisions were opening. Of course, at this point, I was livid and had to remind him that I was not a child, and that was not the reason for which he immediately apologized and asked me to come in first thing in the morning for stitches. 

When you put stitches on a wound that is a few weeks old, more than likely, your body will reject them because your skin is too fragile to hold them in place. He stitched one side, and the day I left the country, he stitched the other side. As he wrapped up, he realized that he never removed the stitches from my belly button and did that as well, which. Had I not went in to get my incision stitched up, I would have come back to the states with stitches that should have been taking out weeks ago. A nightmare that I simply wanted to wake up from.