360 Body Lift after Losing 120 Pounds - Kayla: '360 Me'

Kayla:

I am a gastric sleeve patient. I endured the operation in December 2015 and I've lost over a hundred pounds with that. I'm currently a nursing student right now and I'm just finishing up school.

It's like I spent most of my teenage years and my young twenties being overweight and not really gain the full experience or being confident in a bikini or at a party or wearing tight dresses. So I've hit this point now I've lost all this weight, but now I have all this excess skin and I just want to be confident.

J. Timothy K.:

And lets take a look at your tummy. Yeah. All right, very good. So what I look at is right in here, this waistline, this hourglass right in here. Surgically, it's difficult to create this. But if you've got it now, the body lift will just accentuate it. So that'll be much better. So that'd be really good. So all this will be gone, out over the hips, right up in there. That'll be good. And then on the back side, yeah, are very... Let me show you in the mirror mirror on the wall.

Kayla:

Okay.

J. Timothy K.:

Incisions are going to come very low here. I'll have you hold up tummy for me. Very good. So I would probably bring it maybe right about here.

Kayla:

That's perfect.

J. Timothy K.:

Okay. So nice and low here. And then it comes out over the hips. And then as it comes out over the hips, the side here will be tightened a lot. See all that?

Kayla:

Yes. That's the thing I hate the most.

J. Timothy K.:

Yeah, that'll be gone. That'll be gone. And then as it comes around the back side, we'll get you to that. So you'll have a great shape in there. Drains will come out in the pubic region here as well as the pain pump. And then you'll be in a garment from about here to there. And then you'll have a binder on top of that and then all the drains will come out in here.

Kayla:

Okay. Will my drain incisions kind of look like this little one that I have.

J. Timothy K.:

Yeah. Even better, even smaller. And they'll come out in here and when they heal, you're barely able to see them. So that was a drain they put there or was that the scope?

Kayla:

No, that was my scope.

J. Timothy K.:

Yeah. That's right.

Kayla:

I only had one, I had four.

J. Timothy K.:

Okay. Yeah, they do four or five or... Yeah, it looks good. All right. Yay.

Kayla:

I'm excited.

J. Timothy K.:

Let's do it. Good. Any questions? Anything?

Kayla:

Where do I go from right after surgery?

J. Timothy K.:

Oh yeah. Very good question. Okay, so you'll get there for the surgery.

Kayla:

Okay.

J. Timothy K.:

Pictures, markings, pictures. We'll do the surgery. We estimate probably what, eight hours ish, something like that. Some of that is anesthesia time where you're asleep and we're just cleaning you up. Some of that is flipping you around, moving you around. Some of it's getting the garment on. So it's not all surgical time.

Kayla:

Okay.

J. Timothy K.:

Then you're in the recovery room at the Surgicenter for probably about two hours. So that brings you there... Say we start at eight, we're done by four. So you're out of there by six at the Surgicenter. Then the ambulance, non sirens blaring, picks you up and transports you to Serenity, which is in Santa Monica. Cross the street, not half a block but across the street from a hospital, Saint John's hospital. One of the best hospitals. Great Hospital. We're not going to have to go there, but just in case. So they pick you up by ambulance, take you to Serenity and then I'll see you there the next morning. And then I'll see you the following morning after that where I expect you'll be able to go home at that point.

Kayla:

I'm just excited. Like I have butterflies in my stomach. I'm not nervous. I've watched Dr. Katzen perform these. I'm obsessed with watching his surgeries.

J. Timothy K.:

So basically I'm drawing the preoperative markings here. These are my vertical lines, my up and down lines, these are not the incision. And these are lines that help me get the body back together once I've taken apart. So I know I need to connect that line with that line to get everything nice and straight.

Kayla:

My family's supportive. I think they just want me to be happy. They're nervous. Most parents are really nervous about a surgery like this. Especially, a body lift is a big one. They just want me to be happy and they're very supportive. On my Instagram, Kayla Got Fit, I have quite a bit of following that is just an amazing support group. And it's funny, I haven't met any of these people, but they wish me all the best and I think it's really cool to have that.

J. Timothy K.:

They have turtle hatcheries and they invite the public to help release the turtles. The turtles are like this big. So they hatch from the egg and they hatch at like dusk almost before night starts and you've got to help them from their hatchery across the beach into the ocean.

Kayla:

Aww.

J. Timothy K.:

It's so cool. Like this big and it takes them like three hours to get to the water.

Kayla:

That's so cute.

J. Timothy K.:

You gotta make sure the gulls and the penguins... Not that penguins, but they're tiny. They'd come down and swoop them. Once they get to the ocean, they're like, "Oh..."

Kayla:

We're free.

Speaker 2:

We're free. I'd imagine, yeah.

J. Timothy K.:

But there are thousands. I mean there are probably a thousand you'll release that night and probably like two will live to adulthood. But it's so cool. Try to do that if you're in Maui again.

All right. Heavy drugs coming in.

Kayla:

My boyfriend's in Michigan right now and he's freaking out.

J. Timothy K.:

Cool, cool.

Kayla:

He works for the NHR.

J. Timothy K.:

Oh, cool. That's really cool.

Kayla:

[inaudible 00:05:40].

J. Timothy K.:

Cool. All right. Heavy drugs coming in. Just relax. Pick out a good vacation. How about Maui for the turtles? Swim with the turtles.

Kayla:

I don't...

J. Timothy K.:

It's okay. It's the drugs coming in. Just relax. Just relax. You're doing fine. It's the heavy drugs. Dr. J's special.

Speaker 3:

Two and flip.

J. Timothy K.:

So she has a nice hourglass figure here. Her waistline goes in. All the excess skin and fat of her belly, front of her abdomen, hips, it's all been raised. All this is nice and smooth and nice and tight. You can bounce a quarter off for a nice tight tummy. So she has a concavity here. So it all looks really, really good.

Kayla:

I feel a lot more confident now. I feel like I walk with a certain... I don't know how to say it. Like I guess I have more poise now I feel. I'm just more confident. I just feel a whole lot more ready to like attack the world, kind of just like bring it on. Like before I felt like I was really just shy and timid because I felt like I was hiding behind my skin or when people looked at me, my skin was the first thing that they were seeing. They might not have been, but to me in my head that's what I was thinking. So now that I am completely like skin free, I just feel a whole lot more confident and happy. I'm really happy with my results.

I feel amazing right now. I feel... Just everything's so much easier to do. Like you don't realize it how much the skin just makes it hard to do everything. Like I took a yoga class and it was really nice to do like downward dog and not have my skin just like in the middle and pulling you down. Or everyday activities. This is funny. Like I have to be a little bit more body conscious of my hipbones now because I'll walk into chairs and I'll be like, "Oh my gosh, like those weren't there before." I gotta watch out for them. It's the best experience I've ever had. The pain was all worth it, and I would do it again.