melting mama I Product enabler.

$5 MIL Suit for broken boobs.

I am going to refrain from most commentary, because, well, you know the story.  BUT HOLY SHIT, $5 million in damages from botched breast implant surgery?

Bo-TAX, Taxing Plastic Surgery?

 
So, not only will it cost me $50,000 to have plastic surgery in Boston, MA -- I'd be a little more likely to head to Mexico.  

(Hey, don't knock it.  We had one of the "best" plastic surgeons' in the country, and he was an addict.  O-o)

Adding five percent to the already insane costs of plastics?  HA.

The tax, which would be paid by the customer but collected by doctors, would be levied on any cosmetic surgery that is not necessary to address deformities arising from congenital abnormalities, personal injuries resulting from an accident or trauma, or disfiguring diseases, a definition taken directly from current tax code covering deductible medical expenses.

The proposal — called the Bo-Tax, in a play on the name ofBotox, the popular wrinkle-eliminating treatment — has outraged plastic surgeons, who say they are being singled out because of an outdated perception that people who have cosmetic procedures are well-to-do.

The 7,000-member American Society of Plastic Surgeonssaid its internal surveys showed that 60 percent of members’ patients earn less than $90,000 a year.

“A lot of people think of this as a tax on rich Republican housewives; rich, nonworking Republican housewives,” said Dr. Phil Haeck, the group’s president-elect. “And that’s not the case.”

The ASPS says:

Call 1-877-221-8207 …contact your members of Congress to oppose the cosmetic tax!

Taxing medical procedures, of any kind, can have a negative effect on health care costs and access to patient care.   This tax will be the responsibility of the patient to pay and the physician to collect.

How Much Do Men SUCK?

Because they can drop 200thousand pounds and not have enough skin to fly over Texas?

Addicted to plastic surgery?

"Don't have cosmetic surgery to create a self."

Watch this:

CHASING BEAUTY: My Cosmetic Surgery Takeover

This is something very real for post massive weight loss patients, some do become addicted to plastic surgery, or who are inflicted with serious cases of Body Dysmorphic Disorder.

Recycle Those Muffintops

  

^{Illustration - MSNBC}
Are you built like I currently am? 

Growing muffins, err, muffin-tops?  Doctors can put those muffins to good use now with plastic surgery-- siphon your muffin tops to make boobs.  Mr's mom had a different procedure where they took her back rolls to make boobs.  Hey, I guess it's recycling!

MSNBC -

Problem solved. A new study suggests an inventive use for your muffin top: In Miami, a plastic surgeon is liposuctioning that excess fat and injecting it somewhere many women actually want a little extra bulge — their breasts. (Waste not, want not, right?)

The procedure combines two of the most popular cosmetic surgeries in America — 307,000 breast augmentations and 245,000 liposuction procedures were performed in 2008, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. It essentially gives patients a twofer, said Dr. Roger Khouri, the Miami plastic surgeon who pioneered the technique and is now reporting results in 50 women.

“You get rid of the fat where you don’t want it, and you move it where you want it to be,” said Khouri, who recently presented his findings at the annual meeting of the plastic surgeons' society in Seattle. "The augmentation looks completely natural. This does not have the implant look; this does not have the fake look. There’s no scar, and there’s no incision.”

And that's the appeal for many women. Khouri's approach seems like a more natural way to up your cup size, as opposed to getting breast implants. It's your own fat, after all — it's all still you. Just ... rearranged.

“I live in Miami, and it’s pretty common to see women here with breast implants,” said Huerta, who's 28 and had the procedure done two years ago. “But it’s really uncommon to see breasts I really like. They look really fake — too separate, too bubbly, too plastic-y. Just the thought of putting an implant in me — putting something foreign in my body — was not an idea that I’d really felt comfortable with.”

Cheeseburgers find a new home
In the weeks before her surgery, Huerta decided to give Khouri a little more to work with, and packed an extra 9 pounds on her 5-foot-4-inch frame with a diet that consisted of more cheeseburgers and fries than usual. "I wanted to make sure I could make my breasts as big as possible, so I decided to store as much fat as possible — so he could pull out as much fat as possible," said Huerta, who went from weighing 115 to 124 pounds. “I was eating everything in sight."

That's not exactly the route Khouri recommends, but it worked in Huerta's case, who went from a small B cup to somewhere between a C and a D.

Huerta's plan backfired a bit, as it took some dieting to get back to her normal weight, but she's still loving the natural look and feel of her surgery results. (And so is her boyfriend, she adds.)

Khouri notes the procedure works best on women who aren't really fat, but who have just a little extra squashiness in some of the usual places: the hips, tummy or thighs. His research tracked 50 women, ages 17 to 63, over five years, and found that the average increase was about 210 milliliters, or about two cup sizes.

“The advantage of this is you can put the fat exactly where you want it so you can sculpt the breast a little bit more, whereas the implants only come in so many shapes and sizes,” said Dr. Karol Gutowski, a clinical associate professor of surgery at the University of Chicago and the chief of plastic surgery at the NorthShore University HealthSystem in Illinois. Gutowski did not contribute to this study, and hasn't done the procedure himself, but he's familiar with Khouri's research.

Plastic surgeons first tried this fat-recycling tactic in the mid-1980s, soon after liposuction was developed, and since then, experts have argued about the procedure's safety and effectiveness. Initially, doctors were concerned that the displaced fat would calcify, and either obscure mammograms or be mistaken for cancer growths. Now, improvements in MRI make those fears a non-issue, experts say.

“So far, we’re not seeing there’s any increased risk of cancer or any problems with detecting of cancer,” Gutowski said.

There was still one drawback: It just didn't work very well. Over time, the body usually reabsorbed the fat that surgeons had injected into the breast.

"You can overstuff as much fat as you want, but unless the fat is surrounded by a lot of tissue, it's not going to grow," Khouri explained. "Every little droplet of fat, to survive, has to be surrounded all around by healthy tissue with human blood supply."

Lipsuction plus vacuum bra does the trick
So Khouri tried combining liposuction with an earlier breast-enhancing innovation of his that hadn't exactly taken off — the Brava, which went on the market in 2001. It works like a motorized suction-cup, it's shaped like a giant bra and it sucks and stretches breast tissue. Marketed as a nonsurgical do-it-yourself boob job, the Brava has been met with disappointment by users who felt, well, deflated by the lack of long-term results from the device alone.

In Khouri's study, patients wore the Brava for 10 to 12 hours a day several weeks before and after surgery. Most patients, like Huerta, wore the device overnight, mostly to avoid the attention they'd attract in public. Awkward as it may be, the Brava seemed to do the trick. The vacuum bra expanded the breasts just enough to give Khouri pockets surrounded by healthy tissue where he could inject the liposuctioned fat.

And so far, so good. The study followed each of the women for an average of three years after surgery, and for these women, fat graft survival averaged 85 percent. A Harvard doctor picked up the procedure and has done several surgeries this way, and in February, Khouri will run a two-day workshop where he will perform the fat-grafting surgery in front of 500 plastic surgeons.

Now, this method is being focused toward breast reconstruction for cancer survivors, such as Astrid Nicastri, who is 32 and lives in Miami.

“I was really unhappy with the idea of getting implants,” says Nicastri, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 and had one breast removed in 2008. It was not her first bout with the disease. She'd had brain cancer at 12, another brain tumor in 2006 and after surviving breast cancer, she says, “I’d had enough. I didn’t want anything more messing with my body. I didn’t want implants in my body to remind me. For me, it would be a reminder that I’d had breast cancer. …  I didn’t want something foreign in my body.”

After Nicastri heard about Khouri's work at a cancer support group, she scheduled an appointment and had her surgery earlier this month. She loves her results, and has even passed out Khouri's card to other breast cancer survivors she's met.

“When you have something missing from you, you’re more self-conscious,” Nicastri says. “It gives me so much more courage to go out there in the world. And I got a little liposuction, too.”

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33494347/ns/health-skin_and_beauty/

'The surgery might have saved my life, but I wish I'd never had it done.'

I share this, not because of the article, because seriously:  "Britain's Fattest Teen," uh, what?  It's a bit over the top and this is obviously a tabloid, and I bet this girl got serious CASH to pose.  But, the photo and message is something I understand, at least a little bit.

It's a realistic view of what WE LOOK LIKE after weight loss surgery and massive weight loss.  Yes, your mileage will vary, but I look at her and think, "Wow, that's just like me."   

Now, she started out at 476 lbs, so it may be more dramatic, but she is very young, and this is actually a good result compared to what might have been at an advanced age.  And, frankly, her legs beat mine.  :/

"I know it sounds ungrateful, but I preferred my body when I was fat,' the 19-year-old said.

'At least it was firm and curvy, not droopy and saggy. I had nice firm arms - now the skin just hangs and I have to cover them up because they look so awful.'

'The surgery might have saved my life, but I wish I'd never had it done.'

Because, that's how she FEELS about it right now, perhaps? 

GASP!  SHOCK!  HORROR!

I just saw a hundred pairs of eyeballs roll all completely around. 

     "Losing weight is not about your looks!  It's about saving your life!" 

Yeah. But.

    "How dare she!?  I love my surgery!  I love my surgeon!  I want to have another bypass!  I have a life!  I love life!" 

But, sometimes, when you are young, and dying to look relatively normal?  Vanity shoots STRAIGHT TO THE TOP OF THE LIST OF REASONS TO HAVE WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY.  It just DOES, even if you do not admit it out loud.  Maybe not for everyone, but I guarantee you there are loads of pre-ops out there who have their priorities like this:

1. To look good.
2. To feel better.
3. To get rid of my diabetes, high blood pressure, etc...etc...

Particularly younger pre-ops, more likely girls, but boys too.  In fact, it was the ONLY reason my husband persued WLS.  ("OMG, WHAT?!")  Yep.  He was told that he looked like a slob, and would never get ahead in his career unless he changed that.  So?  What do you do?  Get a lawyer or a surgeon?  Riiiiight.

It's just reality.  Sure, it's not "right," but you cannot change how someone feels and telling them it's All About Health when all they see is the unreachable goal of a bikini body. 

Once they get to that place, the "Now what?!" stage of losing the weight and finding themselves looking more like a Sharpei than a woman, it SUCKS.  Enough so that it might make them feel like, "What WAS the point?" even if they did have resolution of disease and concerns from their former size.

She says that there are also complications:  "stomach pains and constant diarrhoea," that make it hard to get out of bed sometimes.

'I wish I'd lost the weight through exercise and healthy eating. I know this operation was life-saving, but the complications I'm suffering now might still kill me. The truth is I feel I'm no better off than I was before.'

Woman fakes breast cancer for breast implants?

I hope this isn't true.

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