Hi all, you may remember my post here from the other day, to which this is a follow-up-
-where I asked about what more body surgeries I should talk to Dr. Barry Eppley about. A few commenters said "share your experience when you hear from him!"
Well, I had my consultation and got a quote, so I'm here to report back!
He's a really friendly guy, as my other surgeons I've met with have been, and we talked about shoulder reduction, rib removal, temple implants, breast augmentation, and he briefly mentioned hip implants though I'm more interested in the first few things I mentioned.
He said basically nothing that isn't already available info on the wiki about shoulder reduction, which was fine, I think surgeons have to talk over the procedure.
We then discussed rib removal, which he assured me as to the safety of, the way most people attest that it's a safe procedure, and he talked about how he could at the same time do liposuction on the region as well as remove some of the musculature that holds together the removed ribs (the intercostal muscles, I believe)- a bunch more than I bargained for and I'm really excited about!
This would provide me with the smallest waist I can get on my frame, which I desperately need because as numerous people have pointed out, my body is craaazy boxy and I need work done on it. He noted that lipo alone wouldn't be a good option, given that I'm fairly lean (where he got this idea, I don't know, quarantine has not been kind to my waistline!), though I'd definitely like to pursue lipo in the future on places like my arms and back that need work, if I can't manage to lose more weight there.
I also stated that I wanted to do breast augmentation, on the recommendation of some of the people here (thanks for you input, y'all!) which he said adds a day or two of recovery time in tandem with another procedure and would be easy to do. This is also true of temple implants, which offer the advantage of being long-term solutions the way fat grafting isn't.
However, he stated that after-care being a big concern, he's reluctant to both rib removal and shoulder reduction at the same time the way he would be willing to do both BA and either procedure because of how incapacitating both are. After making it clear to him that I would have the help of my family afterwards, though, in contrast to most of his patients who go to him alone, he was more amenable.
Doing both procedures means staying the night at the surgery center, which ups costs, and so the quote I got for following through with both at once comes to a little more than $40,000.
Recovery itself will take a month or more, mostly due to the shoulder procedures, during which you have very limited arm mobility. I'm not sure how to dilate during that time, but dealing with my man body is absolutely a must so I intend to find some way.
In any event, I'm happy to answer any more specific questions that I can- honestly, he provided little more information than is already available on the wiki and I haven't gotten a timeline for scheduling from their office yet, but I'll be sure to update this post when I do hear back from them!
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