Body Lift Surgery – Interview with Patient

Dr. Richards:      I’m here with Jacqueline. Jacqueline. Just tell me a little bit about yourself. I know you’ve lost a lot of weight. Tell me how heavy you were when you started losing weight.

Jacqueline:      Okay. I’ve been overweight most of my life. I’m 48, unfortunately, now. I lost an average of maybe two or three stone at the very most on every diet imaginable. I’ve been through them all. I’ve done every diet. The heaviest I got to 22.5 stone and I was in a size 26 to 28.

Dr. Richards:      I’ve seen the pictures, you look really, in those big trousers you had there. When did you start on Lighter Life?

Jacqueline:      I started in April 2007, and I weighed 22.5 stone and I lost 7 stone in 5 months with them. I carried on after, because it’s initially 100 days, the first hundred days. This is total meal replacement. You don’t have any conventional food whatsoever, but you get all your nutrition, all your minerals in there. What I found was with Lighter Life, it worked for me is because food was the drug of my choice. Where people use alcohol and they use drugs, I used food to anaesthetise or get my feelings or anything that upset me. When I went to Lighter Life, that took that away from me. That took my drug of choice away from me, and then I realised how I was using food emotionally.

Dr. Richards:      Okay. You did really well losing weight. Tell me, it was your arms, you told me earlier was the thing that you really hated. Tell me about those.

Jacqueline:      The arms were the worst thing of the body. You could cover the rest of your body up. I know you can with your arms. I couldn’t wear anything like this, like short sleeved or even a swimsuit even if I was slim enough. Because people, if they would talk to me, they would automatically look at my arms that naturally hung down. As I was saying to you before, if there’s one thing I could’ve afforded out of all the surgery that I’ve had, it would have been my arms was my first priority.

Dr. Richards:      Show me your arms now.

Jacqueline:      Here are my arms now.

Dr. Richard:            So talk about that. So, I mean, they were really down here, weren’t they?

Jacqueline:      Oh, god, yeah, they were about . . . you must’ve took about 4, you got three or 4 . . .

Dr. Richards:      It was a lot. Yeah. Okay and there’s the scar along here. If you put your arm down, you can’t see the scar from the front and you can’t . . .

Jacqueline:      I’ll swing about and you can see in the back.

Dr. Richards:      Yeah, so that’s the thing about the scar. It should be right in the armpit so you don’t see it from the front or the back. We did your bust at the same time.

Jacqueline:      Yes, you’d realigned my bust, which they were down here. So they went up to there. At the same time, the operation, as I said before, there was no pain whatsoever and that’s the god’s honest truth. No pain whatsoever. I was just on paracetamol. Normally, really well looked after here. I was having the dressings changed every couple of days. Once the dressings come off I Bio-Oiled, which you recommended to me. Me and my husband, every night and it, it was well-worth it because it’s just a tiny scar.

Dr. Richards:      That’s really gone really nicely now. You can hardly see that. That’s great. So, how is the bust? We’re not going to look at it.

Jacqueline:      The bust is really good. The last time I had boobs like this I was about 11, so that was lovely. That was absolutely brilliant.

Dr. Richards:      The scars are very acceptable.

Jacqueline:      Yeah, they were fine. They’re the same as my arms, they are.

Dr. Richards:      That was the first session. So, tell me about the next thing that bothered you the most was the tummy.

Jacqueline:      The tummy, the next, yeah, was the next operation to have done was the tummy, which you did, which I persuaded you to do a body lift.

Dr. Richards:      So, tell them what a whole body lift is.

Jacqueline:      A body lift is like when you take, extended from the stomach around to the back. You only left about six inches that was the body lift.

Dr. Richards:      So, we did that and that was good, sort of taking off that lower bit of the tissue. I think I took off about four kilos of tissue there. Relocated your tummy button. It doesn’t work that well for the upper part of the tummy.

Jacqueline:      No, I was really disappointed. The first thing I did when I come from the anaesthetic, I looked underneath and it was still there. Because above here, which they call the muffin top now, that was still there and that was literally hanging. In fact, that was hanging lower than what my breasts were. That was bigger than my breasts, I think then. So I was really, really disappointed with the tummy.

Dr. Richards:      So, we did that. Then how long ago did we do the last correct?

Jacqueline:      It’s two and a half weeks ago.

Dr. Richards:      Okay, tell me what happened.

Jacqueline:      Two and a half weeks ago, went back in, the 22nd of December. You reopened the bottom of my hips there, because I had a couple of little bits of hanging skin there which are completely and utterly gone. The best bit you just took that away. You just sliced it from there and now, as you can see. I haven’t got the best thing to wear on today, actually. I should have put something . . .

Dr. Richards:      It’s pretty flat, though, when we looked . . .

Jacqueline:      Yeah, but you can see it emphasised my bust more now because before this would be hanging, I would have to wear controlled pants again. So, it’s just happiness.

Dr. Richards:      They are all gone, the controlled pants, now.

Jacqueline:      Oh, yeah. I [inaudible 05:17] outside.

Dr. Richards:      Really? So, that’s really right. Any advice, you’ve been through a lot. You’ve lost all the weight. You’ve done really well. You’re probably half of the body weight you were, aren’t you? Any advice to anyone thinking of . . .

Jacqueline:      My advice to anybody is it’s never late. I’m 48 now and wish to god that I had found this years ago, although it wasn’t available years ago. But it’s never ever too late. You’re using food for a reason. We all overeat for a reason. When people say, I can’t stop eating. I never used to think I could stop eating, but I was using it as an emotional crutch. With Lighter Life, not just Lighter Life, there’s other programs as well out there like the Cambridge and that but with that, it’s took away. Like I said, you took a choice and then you find out why  emotionally you’re eating. Because you can’t choose, you can’t turn to that food then. You have to cope with life without food. My advice to anybody is just go for it because it is just absolutely fantastic.

Dr. Richards:      Once you have that, once you’ve lost the weight, you’re left with the excess skin. Any advice to people about how we should tackle that?

Jacqueline      Come see Mr. Richards, because that, yeah, as I said before, if I couldn’t afford to have the surgery after I lost weight, I probably wouldn’t have lost as much weight because I would have stayed about 15 stone because it looked horrendous. I would’ve let on a bit more weight to fill it out a little bit more. If you, obviously, can afford to come and do it, it’s like a new and decent life.

Dr. Richards:      I think the important thing is to prioritise the areas. So, with you it was your arms and bust.

Jacqueline:      First of all is the top. You can hide anything else. You can clothe everything else. For me, to be able to have a short sleeve t-shirt, I mean, even in the winter now, I’m not going to wear any long sleeves. This is my prerogative to wear these now. The top and my bust would’ve been my priority. Other people it may different. They might decide the stomach, but for me it was the top half.

Dr. Richards:      Brilliant. Thank you very much for coming to talk to us today, and hope to see you soon.

Jacqueline:      Thank you.

Dr. Richards:      Thank you.