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I feel as if I am reporting from a foreign land. Having never expected my life experiences to include plastic surgery, it is as if I have found myself visiting some strange country I never imagined on my list of travels – Timbuktu, say, or one of those bizarre Eastern European autocracies. Kyrgyzstan perhaps.

The final days and weeks leading up to the surgery were stressful as I fretted about what might happen and what could happen to cause extra problems. One of my children had a cold and I worried that I might catch it. I worried that my parents wouldn’t be able to come and help take care of the kids. I worried about where I should stay after the surgery. I fretted about what clothes to wear after the surgery and if I bought all of the necessary medications. Most of all, I agonized about the decision I was making to undergo an expensive, invasive and unnecessary surgery. If a disaster befell me on the operating table, what would happen to my children? How would I deal with the guilt of being physically impaired if I survived but had some major complication that impaired my future health?

The what-ifs were agonizing and made me more than a bit grumpy and unhappy as the time came for the surgery. I had read about other women rejoicing at the thought of their new bodies and how they couldn’t wait to undergo their transformations. That was not my experience. Having survived two unpleasant c-sections, all I could think about was the difficult recovery period and whether I was making a bad choice to go this route at all.

When the day arrived to finally have the surgery, none of the awful what-ifs materialized. My parents arrived on schedule. The kids were packed off happily to daycare and summer camp. I had all my supplies and the perfect post-surgery clothes. And since I am writing to you now, you can see that I have survived the procedure. But I can’t say it has been exactly what I had expected.

The surgery was done in a private clinic in Yorkville. The clinic is upstairs in a non-descript building with no sign to declare it on the ground level. The elevator also services an underground parking garage where we were directed to park so that after the surgery, I could enter the car without maneuvering on the street. I also imagined some A-list clients ducking the paparazzi this way; of course, there was no fear of that for me!

Both of my friends who had tummy tucks at the same clinic had stayed overnight, but I had decided against it. It cost an additional $800 to stay overnight and I deemed it an unnecessary luxury. I do have to say that I still find it amazing that I actually have more than one friend who has done this, and also, if you are contemplating it, you might want to stay overnight if you have a lot of stairs to walk up to get to your bed, or if you don’t have someone like your mother, an extremely caring and capable spouse, or a night nurse to help you the first night.

I survived the procedure, but I can’t say it was exactly what I had expected.

My appointment was at 1:30 and my husband and I had walked around the block once since we were a few minutes early. It was like having one last moment of health, just in case. The whole morning was fraught with an overwhelming sense of drama, like a bad high school play.

When we opened the door to the clinic, we were the only people in the waiting room. There were five or six chairs and a tiny reception desk. I was asked to come inside and a very kind nurse showed me into a changing room that looked like a fancy hotel bathroom with a wall of grey gym lockers. I was told to put on a surgical gown and a robe and leave all of my clothes in the locker. I would be coming back to this room to fetch my clothes afterwards and I imagined how difficult it might be to reach my clothes on the top hook, so I put everything neatly on the bottom of the locker. As I opened the locker doors to find an empty one, I saw all of the lockers were full of identical styles. I was told to bring slip-on shoes, since I wouldn't be able to comfortably tie or untie my shoes after the surgery, and swelling could make my shoes too tight as well.

After I had on the fluffy hotel robe and matching white slippers, I was invited to speak with one of the nurses and then the anesthesiologist. The anesthesiologist had a dramatic Russian accent, full makeup, dangling earrings and high heels. I wondered how she could work all day in those shoes. What if she had to run to save me? What if her earrings got in the way? I didn’t ask her about her choice of attire. I did ask her if she ever had any patients wake up while they were having their surgery, or rather, if they were able to feel the surgery, but weren’t able to move or complain. She said that that had happened, but only when that patient had had so many other medical issues that she hadn’t been able to sedate them properly. She said that I was healthy and she didn’t expect that that would be an issue for me. I was actually rather comforted by her honesty. I liked that she was able to tell me the truth and put it into scientific context, rather than just brushing off my fears. I forgave her the earrings and kitten heels.

Finally, my surgeon arrived and asked me to remove all of my clothes so he could draw on me with a marker where he would need to cut. The marker looked suspiciously like a dry erase marker, which seemed silly. I mean, don’t you expect something to be used for surgery to be high tech and unique? As he wielded the dry erase marker, I tried to hold my breath as I stood in front of him and wished silently that he would take his time and make careful measurements. It didn’t take him more than a few seconds. The marker traced a heart shaped figure around the top of my navel from a few inches below my breasts all the way down to my pubic hair. He asked me to lie down so he could look at his markings while I was flat on my back. He used both hands to pull down the extra skin on my stomach and pronounced me “a perfect candidate.” I told him I was very relieved to hear that and he said that he would see me in the surgery room.

One of the nurses told me I could say my “final goodbyes” to my mother and my husband, who were still sitting in the waiting room. There was another mother in the waiting room, so I couldn’t show my husband the marker lines. I wanted him to see the extent of the surgery I was facing. I had told him what would happen, but I didn’t think he could appreciate it unless he could see the wide expanse of flesh that was to be removed. Instead, I gave him a brief hug and asked him to keep his cell phone on in case there was any kind of emergency. My mother said not to worry. I closed the door and followed the nurse to the surgery room.

The surgery room was much better stocked than the ones I had used in the hospital for my c-sections. I told the nurses that I had wished I could have had my children there. They laughed and said that they had done a lot of things in that room, but never delivered any babies. They asked me to get up on the table and as they prepared me for the surgery, I asked if any of them had seen the movie Brazil, which has a surreal subplot about plastic surgery, but none of them had seen it. I then fretted out loud about my children and the fact that I hadn’t written a will. What was wrong with me, I’m a lawyer for gosh sakes and I was having surgery. Why could I have not written a simple will for myself? Before I had time to complete that train of thought, I was asleep and the next thing I remember was waking up in the recovery room.

I woke up thinking “What a strange dream I had! I dreamed I was in an operating room having plastic surgery. How bizarre!” The nurse in the recovery room told me not to try to sit up and that I should go back to sleep for a while, but I couldn’t. I have a strange reaction to pain medication. Most medication that makes other people drowsy actually keeps me awake. Even cold pills keep me awake. I also couldn’t stop talking and I think I was talking a bit of nonsense, but the nurse was kind. When she realized I wasn’t going to go back to sleep, she helped me to transfer from the hospital bed to a recliner a few feet away.

The surgeon pulled down the extra skin on my stomach and pronounced me “a perfect candidate.”

My husband and my mother came in to see me and the doctor checked in. It was the first and last time I would see the doctor until my 6-week post-op check-up. I was extremely thirsty and the nurse was limiting my water consumption because she didn’t want me to vomit. The surgery had taken less than an hour. (Sometimes tummy tucks can take an hour and half or two or even longer.) Everything had gone fine, but the doctor hadn’t been able to fix a small hernia that had been on the agenda.

When I was able to leave, a nurse helped me shuffle the few feet it took to get to the changing room where my clothes were waiting in the locker. She helped me sit in a chair and then took the clothes from the locker and helped me put everything on. She praised my choice of stretchy underwear, gym pants, button-down shirt and Birkenstocks. She then helped me into a wheelchair and a nurse took me down to the garage level where my husband and mother were waiting in the car.

We drove very slowly to an apartment my parents had rented for the visit. My apartment has too many stairs and since it would be difficult to contend with my children, we had decided it would be a lot easier for me to recuperate elsewhere. I expected to stay with my parents for two or three days. I was there for two weeks.

Walking down the hallway to their elevator was excruciating. Not only was it a longer distance than I had realized when I had scouted it out when healthy, I also hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to walk shuffling and bent over at a 90 degree angle. Luckily, the medication had not yet worn off from the surgery or I am sure I wouldn’t have been able to make it anywhere.

After the c-sections, I hadn’t been able to use my stomach muscles for a while, so I knew what it was like to have to sleep sitting up and was practiced in using the furniture next to the bed to help me get out of bed. But I have to report that in some ways, recovering from the tummy tuck was worse. After a tummy tuck, you don’t have to contend with raging hormones, a sleepless baby or breastfeeding. However, the pain was as bad or worse than a c-section and after three weeks, I’m still not standing completely upright.

I could tell that I was getting better bit-by-bit, because over the past three weeks I have been able to sleep with fewer pillows around me. During the first week, it took seven (yes SEVEN) pillows to be able to lie down in bed. I needed three behind me to make a 90-degree ramp, two under my knees to take more pressure off my tummy, and one under either arm so I wouldn’t roll over in the middle of the night. You can buy a specially made wedge pillow for about 50 dollars, or if you really want to be comfortable, you can sleep in a recliner. (I would have loved to have had a recliner!)

As it were, I didn’t sleep much for the first two weeks. I could not get comfortable. My rear end kept falling asleep from the awkward angle I was sitting in, and contrary to the typical drug reactions, the pain medication was keeping me awake. I spent most of the first two weeks watching crummy cable television. My husband and mother brought me novels and even though I usually love reading, I just couldn’t concentrate on anything. My greatest exercise for the first week was walking to the bathroom. By week two I managed once around the block, but by week three I’m still exhausted. I tried to go to the toy store with my daughter yesterday and before it was lunchtime, I was finished for the rest of the day.

I was told that the recovery would be tiring, but I didn’t expect it would take this long. I was also told that I would be able to stand up straight by the end of the second week. I’m not sure why I am still not standing upright now at week three. I don’t know if my surgery was done particularly “tight” or if I have some sort of psychological fear of standing up. All I can tell you is that it is as if I asked you to do a split and try as you might, your legs could just not get all the way there. It doesn’t hurt to stand up, I just can’t do it!

If you are ever considering having a tummy tuck, you should be forewarned that you will most likely have to deal with the grotesque task of emptying the two drains that are protruding from your wounds. My mother helped me with this unpleasant task and she liked to call them “grenades.” They were shaped like grenades, but were actually clear plastic bulbs that collected fluid from the wound and had to be emptied and catalogued every few hours. Some people have to contend with them for a week or two or longer depending on their swelling. Luckily, I was able to have them removed four days after my surgery. It was my first trip out of the apartment. My mother and I took a taxi to the door of the surgeon’s office.

We asked the taxi driver to drive as slowly as possible. He took us right to the curb in front of the office. I was still walking like a 90 year old. I felt like I was back in college doing the morning-after “perp walk.” I shuffled sheepishly into the plastic surgeon’s waiting room and exchanged glances with another woman walking gingerly to her seat. “You too?” I asked. “How come you are walking straighter than I am!?” She smiled and told me she had had hers a few days earlier.

I was surprised that the doctor wouldn’t be seeing me for the appointment and wondered if he would have checked in on me had I been a “star” client. But the nurse who saw me was very professional and told me that everything was fine. She looked at my scars and told me that she would take out the drains. The actual process of taking out the drains wasn’t painful, but the thought of it sent me practically fainting. I was sweating profusely and the nurse brought me a wet towel for my forehead.

I went back to the office a few days later to remove some surgical tape. It wasn’t a necessary visit, but after my dramatic fainting routine, the nurse figured I could use some extra hand-holding. After that visit, I was told I could take a shower. Following a tummy tuck, you can’t take a shower until after your drains are removed. As I mentioned, for some people, that might be a week or two or even longer. I used baby wipes to take sponge baths the first two weeks. I washed my hair in the sink, with some help.

I don’t know if it was worth it. I still haven’t seen the final results.

I was given a compression garment to wear 24 hours a day for six weeks. I’ve seen some on the Internet that look like burn victim girdles. Mine looks like a big Ace bandage. It has a strip of Velcro and fits around my torso, from the hip-to-hip scar to the bottom of my bra. Some people like to take off their compression garment to look at their surgeon’s handiwork. I was not one of them. I barely looked at the visit with the nurse. I was told that the swelling would be substantial for weeks or even months. I didn’t want to see the Frankenstein scar that ran from hip to hip or the comically grotesque circle around my newly placed belly button. I didn’t want to see my swollen midsection.

When it was time to finally see myself, all I could think of was how precarious I felt without the security of the pressure garment. I had been warned that I might lose some sensation. After my c-sections, I only felt numb where the scar was. After the tummy tuck, my entire stomach where all the skin had been re-draped was numb. My entire stomach did not feel like my own and it didn’t feel ready to support my body, so I took as brief a shower as possible, redressed the wounds, and put back the compression garment. Perhaps I’m just being a “wussy” but even now in week three, when I want to wash my hair, I wear the compression garment in the shower and change into another dry one afterwards.

So you may ask, was this all worth it? Do I regret my decision to have a tummy tuck? I don’t know if it was worth it. I still haven’t seen the final results. My torso is still swollen and has a “tree trunk” appearance. I’ve started to reject some of the absorbable sutures and learned a new term from my recent Googling -- “spitting stitches” – to describe the common (but heretofore unknown to me) phenomenon. But even if my final outcome is not perfect, as long as I can stand up straight in the near future and have no lasting adverse reactions, I don’t think I will ever say that I regret my decision to have the surgery. I made my decision. I will make the best of it and maybe, I’ll even be happy about it. I’ll let you know.