Overview: My experience in 2017 and now in 2019 after revising his work.
In June 2017, I had a breast lift surgery with Dr. Irving Rodriguez, in addiction to belly button repair and a BBL. This review is regarding the breast lift and belly button repair.
What went wrong was an opening of my stitches along with terrible hypertrophic scarring (aka keloid) EVERYWHERE around my breasts and on my bellybutton. In addition, my bellybutton still looks bad and he didn't offer proper advice to fix my outtie, stretched bellybutton. The breast lift scar is unnecessarily long (something my new Dr in 2019 fixed) and it looks like they messed up because there's an incision mark it looks like they started with and never continued on my breast!! After expressing this Dr. Irving Rodriguez and Paulina (she works under him) about the scarring, the effect on my confidence, and trust I placed in him, they didn't contact me for the longest AND THEN they offered to revise it for another 1k. But I didn't want to trust them with my body again.
This wasn't the first issue I've had with Dr. Irving and his staff. Other problems were/are:
-contacting the office (they've been hanging up on me for the past week in March 2018; in 2017 they wouldn't respond well either)
-Shown in photo, they cut my breast and left a scar on a different spot from where the breast lift was performed! When I went home and saw this incision mark I thought "how could a surgeon just mess up like this?" And just leave that mistake unstitched and uncovered.
- in-care treatment (there came a point I started crying post-op because the nurses wouldn't feed me anything more than a packet of strawberry-flavored oatmeal)
-This isn't with me personally, but later that summer, I came into contact with a woman (among many) would had contracted a STAPH infection from Dr. Irving Rodriguez. She and the others weren't helped either.
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My story:
I'll begin just after my operation. One day after. I'd like to share that I was fed nothing but strawberry-flavored oatmeal for about 48 hours in the hospital. There came a point where I pleaded with the nurse to offer more food, but she said nothing was available. I was crying in frustration. I wasn't mad at the nurse; rather upset that Body Art Surgical wouldn't provide adequate food. There came a point where I realized the ONLY way I could get the nurse to actually feed me REAL food was to cause a scene. I'm one day post op, in pain, and start walking towards the exit insisting if they don't feed me I'll feed myself. FINALLY the nurse listens and two hours later Paulina comes to bring me different food.
About two weeks after surgery (I had stayed a week in Mexico recovering at a local hotel), I noticed that my stitches on my left breast was tearing. It was completely unexpected. As a result, I started freaking out and crying. When I contacted Body Art Surgical, I was told that the healing would be unaffected since I wasn't bleeding. Little did I know that the scarring would spread everywhere there was an incision.
Likewise, my belly button looked raw and just horrible. Dr. Rodriguez told me to wait for it to heal. Keep in mind that I TOOK EXCELLENT CARE OF MY STITCHES. I cleaned them daily. I used silicone band aids. I followed all post-op directions.
I had believed that in the following months if I kept my good habits up, the healing would reverse these horrible effects. Hypertrophic scarring isn't typical of me. When I had surgery in the past (in the U.S.), I had 0 raised scars. I concluded that I'd need to seek surgery/expensive procedures to fix the scars.
When I contacted Paulina and Dr. Rodriguez in 2018, they didn't respond for weeks. Eventually they emailed me to offer a revision. After hearing about a staph infection from their patient in 2017 I didn't want to take the risk. I went with someone else in 2019.
It's apparent that I'm upset. I'm lucky to have not received a staph infection, but unlucky enough to be badly scarred from my operation. The reason for the surgery was to help me gain confidence, especially with my fiance. Instead, intimacy has become more difficult because of how terrible I feel about my scars. I admit my BBL came out well. But I truly should have gone elsewhere for everything else.
2019 I had surgery to revise my breasts and bellybutton with a tummy tuck in the Dominican Republic and my surgeon did an EXCELLENT job to fix the unnecessarily long and ugly scar Dr Irving left. He actually does WONDERFUL stitch work. My scar is so thin and near invisible even 2 months post op. AND he provided better advise to fix my outtie bellybutton right. read more