29 Jul Cutting It Out
When Tiana Camilleri got pregnant at the very tender age of 15, she thought her world might end there and then. Like most 15 year olds she had no way of supporting herself, and even emotionally she was too young to cope alone, yet whether she liked it or not, another child was growing inside her. After the initial shock, and after the ordeal of breaking the news to her family and friends, Tiana resigned herself to family life. She succumbed to the pressure to marry her baby’s father, moved in with his very welcoming family, and waited patiently for their child to come into the world.
As the months went by, her still developing petite frame, started taking a different shape. As expected, the bump on her tummy started growing bigger and bigger, and she put on a few extra inches everywhere else, but until the 7th month, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
“Around half way through my seventh month of pregnancy my breasts and tummy started to become irritably itchy and soon enough I developed stretch marks. I tried numerous products and spent lots of money on creams, but by the time I went for one of my last gynaecological visits, my tummy was full of very long, dark red horrible marks. I thought it would be a routine visit but as soon as I undressed the doctor’s face dropped. He was shocked and pretty much horrified at what he saw. He struggled not to alarm me with his reaction but he said that my tummy looked like someone had sliced my skin open with a ragged-edged sword. Being so young and naive, I had previously thought that these sort of stretch marks were normal during pregnancy, and was not expecting this reaction.
The area around my breasts also looked like it had been savagely cut with a carving knife. The doctor said that he had hardly ever seen anything like it, and that it was probably because my body frame was so small, and because my skin was too young to cope with the onslaught of pregnancy.
At that point in my life I was too preoccupied with having everything go well with the birth, and wasn’t too concerned about my condition. I just worried about the baby’s health and occupied myself with learning how to take care of him. Also, whilst still pregnant, my skin was so stretched that the marks were not half as bad as they ended up being afterwards. I never ever imagined what the horrifying end result would look like.
Even though it wasn’t the ideal age to become a mother, Tiana regards having her first child as one of the best things that ever happened to her. “It was a normal birth and the baby was average in size, just over 3kg. I took on being a mother the best way I could, learning along the way, with the help of my family, and my husband’s family. I couldn’t have been happier that my child was healthy and happy, and for the next three years, I was too busy to think about the state of my tummy and breasts, but then, when I turned 18, it kind of hit me.”
Tiana realised that she had gone from having a child’s body to having an old woman’s body, with no transition of having a woman’s body in between. “I had lost all the extra fat that came with the pregnancy, but although I was very slim and toned, my tummy still looked like a rotten prune; my breasts were not a pretty sight either but my tummy looked like the belly of an eighty year old who had borne a dozen children.”
At this point Tiana was only 18 years old and once again her age came into play. “At that time I was not too self conscious, and although I was not totally comfortable showing off my tummy, I still felt confident enough to wear a bikini. It’s not that it didn’t cross my mind to do something to fix it, but at that time, plastic surgery was something for celebrities, and not as easily accessible as today, in fact as far as I knew, back then, no one had ever done it in Malta.”
From time to time, Tiana would feel very depressed and cheated. “I always took great pride in taking care of my appearance but there was absolutely nothing I could do about my tummy. I knew people stared at me even if just an inch of it was showing under a short top, and as hard as I fought not to think about it, occasionally I would try to find out more about surgery. But I knew absolutely no one who had gone through it so I didn’t know what doors to knock on. At that point my only source of information was foreign magazines and the many many stories that I read over the years led me to believe that plastic surgery was not too painful but extremely expensive. I also thought that it provided a miraculous solution for any cosmetic ailment.”
Seven years after having her first child, at the age of 22, Tiana got pregnant again. “I was so happy even though I knew that there was a chance that the stretch marks would get worse. But they didn’t. I didn’t get any new marks and the ones that I already had simply stretched out as my tummy grew bigger and bigger and then went back to their original size when I gave birth. Once again, by the time my daughter was a few months old I had lost the extra weight and my body was back to square one. Once again I was lean and toned but my belly looked awful and no amount of exercise was going to help.”
Summers went by, and with each one Tiana felt worse and worse. “I would try to keep trim and slim, but over the years I couldn’t take people staring anymore and started covering up. I felt that I was too young to wear a one-piece bathing suit, especially when all my friends, were wearing bikinis. I felt so cheated, because whilst I did my best to keep slim and healthy, I still didn’t feel as confident and comfortable as some people who were heavier than I felt.”
Surgery still seemed farfetched, but after having toyed with the idea for so long, and after changing her mind a hundred times, two years ago, at the age of 26, Tiana finally made an appointment with one of Malta’s top plastic surgeons.
“I went there with mixed feelings. I was looking forward to a miracle solution but I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much mostly because I was convinced that I wouldn’t be able to afford it. The surgeon took one look at me and without hesitation said that there was nothing he could do about the stretch marks on my breasts. I almost turned away and walked out the door. Wasn’t surgery supposed to be miraculous? I thought. Why bother with my tummy if I can’t fix my breasts?
“Out of sheer politeness I stayed calm and heard him out. He explained that the only thing that could be done for the kind of stretch marks that I had on my tummy, was not as I thought before, some type of skin graft, but, and my heart missed a beat at the sound of this, I needed to cut off the skin, a tummy tuck.
Not being particularly brave when it comes to medical stuff, I must have turned a dangerous shade of grey at the sound of those words, but he went on to explain that the only way he could improve the appearance of my tummy was to cut a line above my scars which started about one inch above my belly button, pull the skin down all the way down to my panty line, cut the excess skin, and sew me back together as low as the skin would allow him to. He immediately advised that some of the tips of the scars that were very close to my belly button could end up above my panty line, and that therefore there was a possibility that some of the scars would remain visible. He also explained that he could not do anything about the stretch marks that fell out of the tummy area. He showed me a few pictures of past patients and finally said that it would cost €3000.
“I left the clinic feeling like a zombie. I could somehow afford €3000 but this wasn’t the miracle solution I was expecting. By the time I got home I had a zillion questions racing through my head. Isn’t a tummy tuck for fat people? How long would it take me to recover? How risky was the surgery? Would it be painful? What is the rate of success? Had I known that the proposed solution would be a tummy tuck, I would have researched the subject and I would have asked the surgeon all these questions, but I wasn’t prepared for this.
For a while I managed to put the whole thing off. I convinced myself that if I couldn’t fix the marks on my breasts, it was not worth going through at all. My hopes for a miracle surgery that would transform my body once and for all had been shattered, and even though I could afford the surgery, it would not be worth going through if I would still remain somewhat scarred.”
So Tiana left it at that for a few months, until summer came along once again, and all her insecurities and issues came back with it. She was now 27 years old and she had lived with her purple scars for over a decade. By now she had two children depending on her so she had more than the money to consider. “But last summer was the straw that broke the camel’s back. That’s when I decided that I had had enough of feeling that way. I discussed it with my partner until we were both blue in the face, and with the support of my whole family I found the courage to call the hospital and asked for an appointment for the surgery.
It took a couple of weeks to get the date confirmed, and the turn of events felt a little bit surreal. Hospital staff is so used to these situations, that whilst I was aware that I was making an appointment to slice up my body, they made me feel like I was simply making a hair appointment for a special occasion. I don’t know whether this attitude is a conscious decision not to scare the patient, or whether it is because they take things for granted, but for some reason patients don’t get any details about their procedure unless they specifically ask for them. So as the weeks and months went by, and as the big day got closer and closer, I kept calling the hospital with more questions – how long will I take to recover? Will it painful? What exactly happens during the surgery? Will I be on some form of medication? How many days will I be in hospital for?
I was told that I would have tens of stitches right across my tummy and around the belly button, that my abdominal muscles would be stitched together to strengthen them, that for a whole week after the surgery I would have a pipe stitched to my side to drain excess blood in my abdomen, and that I would need to spend at least one night in hospital after the surgery. I was also told that recovery would be uncomfortable but not painful, but at the same time I was advised to take four weeks off from work. I chose to believe this misnomer.
When the big day was just two weeks away I could hardly contain myself with excitement. The days and nights couldn’t pass quickly enough and I just wanted to get it over and done with. But then, with just a few days to go until the big day, I started getting cold feet. I had read enough about the procedure to realise that this was major surgery and no matter how relaxed the hospital staff acted, this was not going to be a walk in the park. I realised that if something had to go catastrophically wrong, my eldest son would always blame himself, and that I was putting my life in danger for cosmetic purposes. With all these thoughts and worries rumbling in my mind I came very close to calling the whole thing off, but I’m glad I didn’t.
The day finally arrived. I got to the hospital at 10am after having fasted for 8 hours, and a couple of hours later I was being prepared for the operating theatre. Funnily enough I was mostly scared of the injection necessary for the anaesthetic to be administered, and I asked the anaesthetist if the surgery could be performed by means of gas mask anaesthetic. Obviously it wasn’t possible and I was assured that I wouldn’t feel a thing. I walked into the operating theatre and was told to lie down on a cold steel table. It felt very much like walking into a slaughter house, and by this time I was so nervous that I couldn’t wait to be put under. In no time I was counting backwards, feeling an incredibly relaxed feeling and suddenly I was out.
The next thing I know I was regaining consciousness in the recovery room. I felt paralysed and a nurse asked if I was in pain, I said yes, she gave me an injection in my thigh and I slept once again. What felt like hours later, I found myself back in the hospital room, with my mother and partner cracking jokes around my bed. Apparently I had been semi conscious and saying silly stuff still under the effect of the anaesthetic. As soon as I realised that I could move, I pulled up the sheets and looked at my tummy. Of course I could not see anything because I had a bandage all around me but I remember quite clearly thinking that my waist looked infinitesimal.
The first night after surgery was very rough. The anaesthesia left very bad side effects, my blood pressure kept dropping, I was in a lot of pain, and for the life of me there was no way I could sit up or stand up straight. Getting out of bed to go to the toilet was the biggest of ordeals because the skin on my tummy had been so overstretched, in fact I had to walk hunched over for weeks. I have to say however that the repaired muscles were the most painful part. For the first two weeks I was like a baby, totally dependent on my partner to help me do the most basic things. Had anyone asked me then if it was worth going through I would have said ‘definitely not’, but two weeks after surgery things slowly started to get better especially when they finally removed the very irritating blood drain that was jutting from inside my scar. Removing it was very painful but after that I couldn’t wait until all my stitches were removed, and I could have a look at my tummy. This didn’t happen until a few weeks later.
I returned to work after four weeks, and there was no way that I could have done it a day before. It was only after four weeks that I could finally stand up straight and move around slowly, but I still could not sneeze or cough without feeling excruciating pain. Looking back I realise that it was a much bigger deal than I thought. I was lead to believe that it would be easier, and in a way I’m thankful that they did that because I don’t think I would have gone through with it had I known everything in full gory detail.
Just like the surgeon had advised, the stretch mark that was on top of my belly button is still visible and I still have a few tips jutting out of my panty line, but compared to the state of my belly before the surgery, I have to say, that it’s much better and I’m very glad that I went ahead with it. This is the very first summer that I’m looking forward to. I can’t wait to go shopping for my bikini, and not have to worry about my scars.
I suppose that it is all about priorities in life. I know that many women live with cosmetic ailments all their lives, but once it starts to affect your mood and your personality, I believe that the bull should be taken by the horns and the situation tackled. Of course, I waited and waited, as it’s not an easy decision to take, but I’m now very proud that I went through with it and lived to see the day.”
First published in Pink Magazine. For full article click here
