Questions & Answers

“How quickly will I recover??? is an important question to ask at your consultation. Of course, the answer will depend on the type of procedure, but the answer also depends on what you consider ‘recovered’. Do you consider yourself recovered when you can… go for a walk/go to work/go to the gym/ see my final results/have more surgery? Some surgeons advertise ’24 hour recovery’, but this is misleading unless you specify what you mean by recovery. In the first three days after surgery, you may require pain medication and will need to be careful to maintain a wound dressing to avoid contamination of your wound. Until 10 days after surgery,…

Looking your best helps you to feel your best. It also helps you to make the most of your opportunities both socially and at work. Diet, exercise, and ‘choosing the right parents’ are important contributors to achieving good health and appearance, and many people also include cosmetic surgery in their formula for success. The increasing popularity of cosmetic surgery has provoked some criticism, and it’s worth reflecting on whether this is justified. Are efforts to improve one’s appearance a sign of insecurity or shallow character? When you dress in the morning or put on deodorant, you are doing so in part to be appealing (or at least inoffensive!) to others.…

We have always referred to people who seek our services as ‘patients’, but a recent article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal has reminded us that not everyone accepts this as preferable to ‘clients’. The term client reflects the power and autonomy of a healthy person who pays for a service, and if it is your preference, we invite you to be our client! From our perspective though, you will always be a patient, as our advice and treatment must always reflect the responsibilities we accept by being your doctor. We need to be confident that you have a problem that is significant enough to warrant the expense, discomfort, inconvenience,…

This is the surgery that can reverse some of the cosmetic changes that arise following pregnancy. Fundamentally there is surgery on both the breasts and the abdomen. The breast surgery addresses the loss of skin tone and volume from pregnancy/lactation. This typically involves a lift as well as possibly augmentation with an implant. The abdominal surgery is typically a tummy tuck including fascial repair and/or liposuction. This surgery is not covered by insurance, although I suspect it might be if it were men who carried and nursed babies!

Breast augmentation causes some loss of sensation due to injury of the tiny nerves that serve the skin. If incision is in armpit, the inner arm often loses some sensation. An incision under the breast will cause loss of sensation of a 1 cm strip of skin above the incision. Neither of these incisions is prone to loss of sensation in the areola, and more commonly patients describe increased sensitivity. This hypersensitivity is temporary, and occurs because the nerves in the breast are stretched by the surgery and implant, and the stretched nerve is more irritable until it grows in length (nerves can grow!) and is again at normal tension.…

There are several aspects of healing that can be compromised by exercise. 1. In the first 10 days after surgery, there is a risk of pulling open a blood vessel and getting bleeding into the wound. For this reason, we encourage limited exertion and movement in the surgical area after any surgery. 2. The first three weeks after surgery are critical to the skin/fat layer reattaching to the fascia/muscle layer. If the two layers don’t reconnect, there can be a permanent space that will fill with fluid (Seroma). We recommend use of an abdominal binder as a splint to remind our patients to avoid movement across the abdomen for the…