Liposuction as a medical treatment

By Tatjana van der Krabben

Liposuction can be applied as a medical treatment. I’m not referring to treatment of psychological issues, but liposuction as a surgery to help improve a physical condition called lipedema. I speak from experience: I’ve had four treatments. Why four? What has been treated extends well beyond the usual bikini issues treated with liposuction. I was treated section by section. The aim of these treatments is to have fat removed that will not budge when on a diet. In fact, I’m done with diets as such. My adapted food regime is a lifestyle. Like with diabetes, lipedema requires a permanently adapted food regime to keep the condition in check. The excess fat on the legs and quite often also the arms causes pain and discomfort. As we grow in size, the pain increases and mobility decreases. Removing fat takes away from the pain and discomfort and enhances mobility.

This sounds very straightforward, but there’s a catch: liposuction is not a cure, it doesn’t tackle any causes. Afterwards you could still gain. Also, it’s usually not reimbursed by insurance companies and doctors are mostly unfamiliar with this option and won’t refer. Lipedema is therefore in relatively few cases treated with liposuction. The option is more available in Europe, mostly Germany, where quite a few plastic surgeons and dermatologists perform liposuction on lipedema patients.

There’s one more catch: generally you get your treatment in the private sector at your own initiative. It’s easy to get caught up in glossy websites and luring advertisements that promise ‘easy, little invasive liposculpture’ or something. Wrong: It’s not easy, it’s invasive and it’s surgery. The lack of knowledge regarding this option, both with respect to its existence and what it entices, has prompted me to approach the media. The Dutch magazine Libelle (issue 46, 2012) has featured a  story regarding my experiences after my first liposuction. Below you find a translation of the article.

Note: since the article doesn’t feature pictures or any other images no scan of the original article was added. Also, I came well prepared for this surgery and expected pain, the secretion from the cuts and swelling. The surgeon send me home with stronger pain medication just in case, yet actually experiencing it was something else. For informative purposes the article contains more question marks than I actually had in the moment.


The day after….I had liposuction
Tatjana (39): “It’s 9.15 when the surgeon’s phone call wakes me up. He wants to know how I feel after the liposuction treatment I underwent yesterday. I feel horrible, did not anticipate to be in this much pain. I tell him and explain the compression pantyhose I’m wearing is soaked with blood and fluid. Fourteen small cuts were made in my legs and they are still secreting fluid. He recommends painkillers he gave me. He explains the oozing is normal, but I can shower, provided I don’t take off the pantyhose. My husband assists me when showering and is feels great to rinse my body. Afterwards I blow dry the pantyhose: a hint the surgeon gave me. Next I get back into bed. My legs are stiff and sore and I have trouble bending my knees. I kill time reading and chatting on my laptop. I also call my mother, who’s taking care of my children today. I don’t want them to see me this way. My mother offers to take them one more night and I’m grateful for the offer. I look at my upper legs. I know it will take weeks before the worst of the swelling is gone and before I’ll be able to tell if the surgery was a success, but I can’t resist looking at my legs. I want the surgery to be a success so bad, to regain mobility and be rid of that continuous pain in my legs. It scares me that my legs now look worse than ever before and cause me more pain than ever before. Stories of failed surgeries I read about online shoot through my head. But something had to be done.

During my first pregnancy I gained 23 kilograms. The last trimester I could barely walk because of the pain in my legs. I thought it would be over after the pregnancy, but after giving birth I lost weight everywhere but on my legs. Lipedema, my physiotherapist concluded, a hereditary condition that aggravates under the influence of hormonal changes. After my second pregnancy it became even worse. My upper body was two sizes smaller than my lower body. I could only walk short stretches and it was hard for to me to take care of my children. That was my biggest motivation to see this surgery through: I just wanted to be there for my kids. It’s 16.00 already. I hardly ate anything. My husband asks if I feel like having sushi, he knows how much I love that. ‘Yes please’, I say. I check my legs again and notice the oozing has thankfully stopped. I find it hard to accept it will take weeks to learn more about the result, but I will just have to accept that. By 9 p.m. I go back to sleep, I’m exhausted. I can only hope for a good outcome. In the end I will need two more surgeries to  get my legs in better shape. But my life will get better. In a year I will be able to do my own housework again, take on activities with the kids and exercising becomes easier. My legs will be much thinner and my new shape makes it much easier to shop for clothes.”