well patients do have an influence on their own recovery. the first is please follow our instructions and if you’re having pain take a pain medicine because if you don’t and you’re trying to be stoic your blood pressure is going to go up as a result of pain and that can translate into more bruising for example. at worse it can cause such increased bleeding under the skin that the wound can just pop apart. so follow the instructions. secondly please don’t smoke. we hope you never smoke but for sure don’t smoke after surgery. it delays the healing and it compromises lung function. there’s not a single good thing you can say about smoking only bad. thirdly don’t lay around the house and do nothing. with cosmetic surgery you don’t need to be bed bound by more than one day or so. by the next day you can be up and about. now you may not want to go to an amusement park but you can certainly take a walk around your house. if the weather’s nice go out get some fresh air. why? because if you don’t if you just lay around the house you’re going to be subject to constipation a very practical issue. you’ve got to get moving because you’ve been taking some pain pills perhaps. most pain pills will produce some level of constipation. you counter that by getting up getting around and by the way drink lots of fluids drink fruit juices. again we tell everybody this. it’s in writing. this is what they should do. we tell them what they shouldn’t do. what they shouldn’t do is go back to the health club three days later and start pumping iron because the blood pressure is going to go up again. elevated blood pressure after surgery is one of our greatest enemies because of the bruising issue and the bleeding issue so it’s generally 10 days before you can go back to your health club and maybe even 2 weeks depending on how things are going but we’ll be monitoring and again because we’re going to see the patient often particularly after the bigger procedures we’re going to see them several times the first week we’re going to be asking these questions every day. how’s it going? are you out and about? are you getting a little fresh air? are you moving your body parts? how’s it going in the constipation or no constipation department? how are you eating? occasionally somebody they just stop eating for whatever reason not a good idea. why? you need protein. you need carbohydrates. your body has to repair itself. we’re big on vitamins as long as they are the right vitamins and we know about them and we’re big on just plain old good old nutrition. what role does sleep have in my recovery? some patients will not sleep well. they will not sleep well because they are either anxious or their sleep cycle has been upset even by the anesthetic or they are not sleeping well because maybe there’s a little bit of discomfort. so the first line of defense is pain medication but if patients don’t take the pain medication say i’m not sleeping well then my answer is going to be then we’re going to do two things we are going to remind you to take the pain medicine and if that doesn’t quite give you the level of comfort and relaxation here’s a sleeping pill. we don’t want people not to sleep. i’ll tell you why. first of all they get cranky. they just get cranky they are not having any fun and they’ll just feel better and everything goes better so yes sleep is very important and we have to monitor these things. again there’s almost a checklist we go through and it’s about eating and about exercise and about not smoking and again even sleep.
what are the things that i can do to recover more quickly from cosmetic surgery?