Surgery Day

The day of the surgery I was so excited and nervous. I didn't have to have to be at the hospital until 10 so time to get the kids off to school before heading to Louisville. The Surgery will be done at Jewish Hospital in the Trager Pavilion http://www.jewishhospital.org/healthnetwork/trager_tour4.html . This isn't part of the regular hospital. It is a very nice separate bldg across the street. When you walk in the lobby on the 14th floor where they do the plastic surgery it is huge walls of glass overlooking the city with palm trees and plush chairs. We were quite early since we were worried about traffic. We couldn't stop for food since I couldn't eat so we just went and waited in the lobby. Once they took us back to prep me everyone so nice. It was a long wait because my surgery wasn't actually scheduled until 12 and he had another procedure that ran over. But the nurses were very nice, we had a TV in our prep area, they brought me heated blankets. But the most comforting thing was seeing how they talked about Dr. Wilhelmi. You know how some people will tell you, "oh he is good" but you can tell they are just saying it because they feel they have to? But every nurse would tell me how I have the best Dr. and how good he was and it was on their face and in their voice that they meant it. You could just tell they enjoyed working with him. You could just see it in his office staff and now the hospital staff. Really made me more comfortable. One nurse said she wished she could go to him, meaning she wished she had the money to go to him. So Doc. comes in to mark me for surgery. It was hard to stand still and not laugh as we cracked jokes about the state of my stomach. He had his resident and was explaining why he was marking what where. I wasn't making it easy making comments like he could just get a paper cutter and pull it all forward and chop it off. Or referring to my stomach as the elephants ass. So above are the pics from being marked up. As you will see I have NO shame. He removed everything from the top line arch and around to the sides down to the line at the pubic line that you can't really see because of all the extra skin that hangs down and covers it. The line down the middle in the front view is the midline. Where the middle of my stomach should be. You can see what is left of a belly button is way off midline. The bulge on each side of that line that just sticks out and has all the skin hanging from it like that thing below a turkey's neck are my stomach muscles. That is my diastasis recti. My stomach muscles had a horrible divorce 9 years ago. There is nothing between them. I can just lay my hand on my stomach and feel gas and stuff going through my intestines. Very gross but kinda cool sometimes. Then the panniculus (extra skin that just hangs down over over my pubic area). Actually have a double panniculus in the middle where on overlaps the other. But I was trying to cover my goodies so I didn't offend and covered it also by mistake and can't go back and retake.