Incisions and their treatment (pics included)

A lot of people say they are afraid of what the scars after the surgery will look like. You will have some, you can’t escape that, the bariatric surgery is done in a laparoscopic way. This gives you a good deal of hope that your incisions will be small and far in between. From my own experience, I can say that it is true.

I had two tiny ones – the first up on the stomach, right under the boobs, in between, and the second small one on the left side right where the ribs end. And I have wonderful news, I have to look at them now with a magnifying glass to find them. They almost disappeared.

I have two smaller ones, maybe 3 cm/1.5 inch where the stomach is, and the last one is a little bigger, i think this is the one through which the stomach went out 🙂 it has maybe 5 cm/2 inches. These three remained visible. And the last one is the “biggest”. What remained of them after 2,5 years is very reasonable. Yes, they are still visible, but I don’t have any bumps or keloids. They stayed there because I lost weight and the filling under the skin disappeared. So it has something to do with the extra skin I have on my stomach. More on this some other time (there will be one separate post about this).

I didn’t have stitches, they gave me staples. Those small metallic ones, are very much alike like the ones you have in the office 😀 I never had them before, so I was wondering how horrible they would be to remove them. I didn’t have any special treatment for the incisions. The nurse only told me to keep them dry and clean. It was pretty straightforward, I was wearing a loose t-shirt at home and made sure that the pants were low enough not to touch the staples. I had no problems with this.

I was afraid to sleep on the side, let alone on the belly, it was all too tender and not recommended, so I was sleeping on my back at the beginning. I tried to move a little to the side after a week and little by little, the body allowed me to start sleeping more and more towards the side and in two weeks I was sleeping completely on my side without any pain. At this point, I was still pinching myself every day with the heparin injections around the belly button. They were for 10 days to prevent blood clots. As I said in a previous post, this was very easy and almost painless.

Pic. My belly with the three main incisions. Still with some glue from the hospital 😂

When I returned home after the surgery, my first interest was in taking a shower. I felt dirty, and sweaty and didn’t like the feeling after being in the hospital full of germs. I am a very clean person. I asked if I could have a shower / when I could have it and they told me that if I can keep the incisions dry, I can do that. Hm hm… this was a little difficult logistically, but I am a creative person, so I simply put a plastic bag (the one for freezing food) over the incisions and for the shower, I fastened them with a wide tape 😂 Surprisingly, it was fastened reasonably well and survived the water flow. For the two small incisions I talked about in the beginning, as they were up and on the side, I put on them aquastop band-aid, sufficiently large so that the staples didn’t get under the glue part. Again, it worked miracles. I made sure I was not letting too much water flow over the belly and it was completely ok. Then I removed it all to allow the scars breathe.

I remember once a little water got under the plastic bag and one of the incisions got a little wet. I dried it with a paper tissue and then with a hair dryer 😂 A very useful trick my plastic surgeon told me to use when I had a breast reduction and scars all over my new smaller boobs. If it worked perfectly that time, it has to be good to go this time as well and it was. No redness, no infection, nothing. As it was wet only a little while and I dried it properly right away, no damage happened there. I was lucky.

I had all the staples for quite a long time, exactly 20 days after the surgery. Most likely they wanted to make sure that the incisions would close well and that when they removed the staples, there wouldn’t be any leaking or the wound would open again. I remember when they told me to go to primary care to have them removed, I was a little scared. I didn’t know how painful this would be.

They put me on the bed on my back, I pulled up the t-shirt and they sprayed some disinfecting spray on the incisions. Checked carefully if everything was closed perfectly and searched for infection. There was nothing wrong with it. What surprised me was that they removed them in two parts. They started with the small ones, they took out all the staples from them, and there were only 3 in each of them. It didn’t hurt much. It felt more annoying and annoying, but it didn’t hurt per se. As if a pesky moskito bites you. It is a little pinch, nothing more. I would compare it exactly to this.

In the bigger incisions, they removed half of the staples. Started somewhere from the middle and made sure that the last ones on the sides stayed. If I remember it well, they were 5 in the bigger ones and 7 in the biggest. So I went home after the first row with 4 and 5 respectively in each incision. It was because they wanted to make sure the new scar would still have some support. I returned after a week to have it all removed.

Pic.  Right after removing

Pic. The biggest one

I didn’t have any problems with the incisions. No infections, and no pain, it was not very tender in the beginning, it didn’t hurt me, and the removal was easy. All I was doing was putting on the scars every day a little of a disinfecting spray. Here it is called cristalmina. They use it in hospitals as well and it is possible to buy it in a pharmacy. It is not expensive. I liked this one because it is not itchy, it doesn’t make any stains on the skin, it is a good brand and again, I had used it on the boobs scars before and it worked wonders.

Pic. www.cristalmina.es

To sum this up, it is all common sense. Make sure it is clean and dry, if it is red or swollen or hurts or you see something leaking from it, rush to the doctor. It is an infection or anything else and you need somebody who knows to check it and decide what to do. Maybe they will only clean it, maybe you will need antibiotics. It is better to go early, maybe even when you are not sure if it is a starting problem or you are exaggerating and it is still under the norm, than come late and have some nasty infection that will require a long and ugly treatment. Don’t underestimate it. If you don’t like anything, go and have it checked.

If you are thinking twice about the surgery because of the scars, it is nothing. They are small and not horrible. This is not a thing that would be a major nono for deciding against the surgery (for me). If you are so worried about the scars, I think it is possible to have them removed by a plastic surgeon. Most likely you will have some amount of loose skin on your belly area, so it might go together with a possible tummy tuck sometime in the future, in case you decide for one. I decided not to do that, it is not so horrible from my point of view. For now. Maybe at some future point, I will decide that I will go for it. But for now, it is not a priority.