Ana’s Story: An Anecdote About Augmentation and Amputation

Part One: The Accident and What It Took

The story of one young woman who decided she had put her life on hold for long enough.

Before photos

Most people would be willing to bet pretty brazenly that an amputee’s most life-changing surgery would — by far — be their limb removal. But most people haven’t met Ana, a decade-long vegan, avid gamer, and giddy fiancée who speaks about her boob job from Dr. Patel and the amputation of her right foot with almost comparable significance.

After all, Ana’s accident took a lot from her — dancing, independency, and even trust in medicine — but Ana would eventually come to find that a different surgery, one she would choose with a surgeon she liked, would bring an immense amount of value to her life.

Dancing

Ana has been dancing since she was 14. It has always been a huge part of her life and a source of femininity and confidence. After her accident, though, she faced many uphill battles when it came to getting back into her dance routine and even being active in general.

Aside from adjusting physically to the damage the accident had caused, one of the biggest impacts to this passion of hers was the inability to find well-fitting shoes. This was a problem in more aspects of her life than just dancing, but Ana says it was hard enough to find normal sneakers when she was just recovering from her initial surgeries.

“If I had to buy regular shoes, I would have to buy two different pairs of shoes to get the two different sizes,” Ana says. “I wanted to just be able to go and buy shoes and feel feminine, which I couldn’t really do. With the reconstruction they had done, I couldn’t just go and do that.”
Her options became increasingly more frustrating for Ana as she struggled to find a balance between her lifestyle choices and the situation she was put in. “I had two shoes, one was a huge boot that looked not human. The other was made of leather. I am a vegan, so that was really hard for me.”

Independency

Ana was 22 when she had her accident. Just far enough into adulthood where the itch for independence starts to become omnipresent for most young adults. Unfortunately, right as Ana had time to start thinking about what her life would look like on her own, she was forced further from that dream.

“I wanted to live on my own. I wanted to have a good job and be financially stable and independent. I wanted to be a pet mom,” Ana remembers. “At the time of the accident, I was already with the man who would become my fiancé. I wanted to look how I wanted to look on my wedding day.”

Unfortunately, the adjustments that Ana would have to make to her life would set some of those other goals on the back burner. Living on her own was suddenly much more difficult, and finding and maintaining a job as a new amputee was also a lot more complicated. And even though she would eventually realize both her dreams of being a bride and pet mom, most of Ana’s attention was on the aftermath of her accident.

Independency (and fitting into the dress of her dreams) would be an achievement that Ana would have to save for a later time.

Trust In Medicine

Ana did not have a good experience with the physicians and surgeons who handled her care after her surgeries. As Ana says, “the doctors I had weren’t really that great. I wouldn’t have chosen them if I had the choice.”

All in all, she had a total of 15 surgeries to deal with the effects of the accident. It was the first time in her life that she had ever needed surgery — up to that point, she had never even broken a bone, which made dealing with this process and the unknown even harder.

One of the hardest things Ana had to deal with was her physicians telling her that the circumstances of her recovery and the appearance of her body were not a big deal or something that she should be concerned about. Her medical team tried many different ways to salvage the limb, a process that left Ana unhappy with her appearance and in a great deal of chronic pain.

When she would voice these concerns, she was never taken seriously. “They brushed it off as though I were fine, even though it was a big deal to me,” Ana remembers. The first 11 surgeries happened within a two- or three-month period. Three more procedures occurred within six months of that, and then the final surgery finally happened a few grueling months later as her medical team finally allowed her to have the amputation.

If you’re interested in learning more about breast augmentation or would like to schedule a consultation with Dr. Patel at New Reflections Plastic Surgery today, please give us a call at (732) 354-3792 today!