*Results may vary
My name is Stacie, I had gastric bypass and a tummy tuck. I lost 134 pounds. I’ve gone from a size 22 to a size 10 in jeans and eight in dresses. The ability of Dr. Frenzel to not only do the bariatric surgery, but also do the plastics has been wonderful because he understood the needs that I would have for plastic surgery, because he had been my bariatric doctor and he understood the complexities that could come after bariatric surgery with the skin and with the excess skin and how even though you’ve lost all this weight that can still be really demoralizing. And getting it all tight and tot and, you know, like you’ve got this 18 year olds stomach is amazing.
Right from the get go he made me feel at ease and he explained the whole process to me on the first visit, set up a timeline for how the procedure would take place and the milestones I needed to meet prior to the procedure. And then he, you know, helped me meet those milestones and has been there with me every step of the way. I’m much more active. I get up and workout every day. I’m up at 4am riding my exercise bike 25 miles a day about four or five times a week. I’m active with my son, we’re out and about all the time. Shopping now is phenomenal. You know, it’s so much fun to go in, especially right at first, when you’re changing sizes so rapidly, and just, when I would go in and, you know, the first time I bought a pair of size 16 jeans and held them up against my 22s, it was like, “Oh man,” and then now I can hold up my size 10 jeans against the 22s, it was like, “oh my gosh, you really did that.”
When I decided to go ahead and do the tummy tuck after the gastric bypass, I of course had a lot of loose skin because once you lose that fat the skin doesn’t necessarily suck back up to your body. And when I think about it, I was thinking about this the other day, I have lost like the equivalent of 28 five-pound bags of potatoes, and so you can imagine all of the loose skin that was hanging around. And when Dr. Frenzel went in and did the tummy tuck, I think he removed like eight or 10 pounds of skin. And it was just like the finishing touch, you know, everything fits smooth, I don’t have to worry about what I wear under clothes now, I can put on a form fitting dress and not have to worry about bumps and bulges, and it’s wonderful.
The pain was minimal; I was back at work within a week. And, even though, you know, I had a little bit of extended time with the drains, it was wonderful because there really wasn’t a huge recovery time. I was able to go back and was even back exercising within two months. My future goals are just in a few weeks I’m having a bunch of pictures taken. My son and I had not had pictures taken since he was ten years old simply because I wasn’t going to get in front of the camera being almost 300 pounds. And now I can’t wait to get in front of the camera. In fact, I’m even going to let the photographer do some with a mid-drift kind of shirt on, just in order to kind of show off the results because I’m so proud of them. And, as the year progresses, my Ph.D. will be finished in August and I’ll be able to walk the stage and become Dr. Stacie Adams and look fine and swell and start a brand new life.
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