The cardigan that never came home
I’m Grace. I’m from Glasgow. Two years ago I had weight-loss surgery on my stomach, and the weight came off faster than I ever thought it would. My waist is the best it’s been since I was in my twenties. My arms are a different story. The skin on the inside of them emptied out and stayed empty. Bat wings, my sister calls them, and she’s not being cruel — that’s exactly what they look like. The bit that finished me off was waving. I’d put my hand up to wave at somebody across the car park and the skin would carry on moving after my arm had stopped. Like it was a second late every time. There’s a cardigan that lives on the back of my chair at work and it has never once come home. Last August was roasting and I was still in sleeves.
I got two quotes here. Both were far more than I could get my hands on. So I started reading about Turkey. Some of it was women with arms they weren’t hiding. Plenty of it wasn’t: wounds that opened on the way home, dressings soaked through at the airport, arms useless for weeks and nobody had said. The question I kept coming back to was is an arm lift in Turkey safe? I wrote to Just Clinic Istanbul. I did not open with a price. I wrote the scar, the strappy dress, the nerves — I type for a living — and not being able to do my own hair. They answered all four. Nobody sent a price list and a smiley face.
On the notes they wrote brachioplasty Turkey — that’s the doctor’s word for an upper arm lift Turkey. After the stomach op I needed an arm lift after weight loss guide that did not pretend the scar wasn’t the price. Some people also have lipo on the same arm. I asked for arms only. They did not add thighs. If a file says arm lift and liposuction Turkey, that is a different plan. I want to tell you the first night, the fleece at the locker, the wave that finally stopped late. No slogan at the end.
The line on the inside
This was bigger than the flight. I’d seen the photos where the line runs from the armpit right down to the elbow. I thought I’d be swapping a flap of skin for a long red seam. At least loose skin can go under a cardigan. A scar is there for good.
He did not talk me out of worrying. He said the scar is the price and there is no version without one. The only question is where it sits and how it’s closed. He put the line on the inside of my arm, not the back and not the front. When my arm is down by my side — which is where it is most of the day — nobody can see it. He showed me photos of women a year on, standing normally, and I had to be told where to look. It went dark red and firm for a few months. I had a wobble around week six. Then the creams and silicone they gave me started earning their keep, and it went pale and flat. That is arm lift scar care for me: not a leaflet, a red seam that took its time. It’s still there. A thin line I can find if I lift my arm under the bathroom light. Nothing like what I was picturing. Brachioplasty before and after Turkey — week one is not month eleven.
The strappy dress in July
I’d convinced myself I would hide a scar the way I hid the skin, and I’d be the woman in a cardigan at every wedding until I was eighty. Last summer I bought a strappy dress in June, put it on and stood in front of the mirror for about ten minutes deciding whether I could leave the house. I did. I wore it to a wedding in July. People look at the dress. Nobody stands there studying the inside of your arm. My cousin told me I looked well and asked where the dress was from. She didn’t say a word about my arms, and she’s the sort who would have. That was the day it paid for itself.
Pins and needles at the keyboard
I sit at a keyboard all day. Numb fingers wouldn’t have been cosmetic. It would have been a wages problem, and I was more scared of that than of the anaesthetic. I asked it on the video call. He said the work is in the layer between the skin and the fat. The main bundle of nerves sits well below that. He also told me what I probably would get: tingling and odd patches in the first weeks, from swelling on the tiny nerves near the surface, not from anything being cut. Keep the arms up. I slept with them on pillows so my hands were higher than my heart. It sounds daft. It helped. Pins and needles on and off for about three weeks. Then it went. I type the way I typed before.
My sister and my hair
I live on my own most of the week. If I can’t get my arms above my head, who’s doing my hair, and how am I getting a blouse on? They were upfront. The first two or three days I would need a hand, and I did. A blouse over the shoulders was beyond me. Hair was somebody else’s job. Button-up tops, loose knickers, a front-fastening bra. My sister came out with me for that reason. By the end of the first week I was brushing my own hair, slowly, elbows out like a chicken, but doing it myself. No shopping bags. The gym was out for six weeks. I went back at six weeks and started light. That is what arm lift Turkey recovery was for me — sleeves, a sister, and hair I could finally do myself.
The first night
The stories that put me off most were the ones where a woman is in a taxi to a hotel by teatime, still half asleep, working out her own painkillers. That did not happen. I came out of theatre and went up to a room on the ward. I stayed one night. Nurses on a schedule: blood pressure, temperature, dressings, tablets when they were due. When I first got up to the loo somebody came with me and stayed outside the door. In the morning the surgeon who’d operated came round himself, looked at both arms, went through the compression sleeves and the sleeping position again, and then discharged me. I was in Istanbul for six or seven nights altogether. I didn’t go near the airport until I’d been back in for a check-up and been told I was fine to fly.
The man in the fleece
The forum story that stuck: a woman at the airport, wound gives way, dressings soaked, three hours from home. They didn’t rush me out. The flight was the back end of the week, not two days after. They took the dressings off, looked at every bit of the closure, put clean ones on, and went through the flight. Don’t lift the suitcase. Cabin bag only. Let somebody else put it in the locker. Keep the sleeves on. Walk the aisle. Spreading redness, heat, a wound getting wetter, feeling shivery — that would be a problem. Mine did none of it. I flew home with clean dry dressings and asked a very nice man in a fleece to lift my bag into the overhead locker.
When the price is a fraction of Glasgow, the fair question is what’s missing. I asked which hospital, and whether it has a real A&E on site. The surgeon’s registration. The anaesthetist. What happens if a scar needs revising. Every one of those got answered, with paperwork. I came home from a big, busy, serious hospital. I paid less than I’d have paid here. I didn’t pay less for less. They wrote bat wing arm surgery Turkey the way my sister says it. The work was the skin, not a joke.
The red patch in week three
What nearly stopped me booking was midnight in the flat, a wound looking angry, and a message that never gets read because they’ve already had the money. The woman who’d written back from the first message was still answering months later. Around week three a small area near my elbow looked redder than the rest. I sent photos at about half nine at night. She came back the same evening after showing the surgeon, told me what it was, told me what to do, and asked for another photo two days later. She was blunt about what not to wait for. Temperature, spreading redness, pain getting worse — GP or straight to A&E here first, then tell them. That was over a year ago and I still get a reply.
I’d never been to Istanbul. I don’t have a word of Turkish. I came out at arrivals and there was a driver holding a board with my name on it. Hotel, hospital, check-up — a car each time. My sister and I never once stood on a pavement squinting at a map. The same woman stood with me while the surgeon drew on my arms in front of the mirror. She went through the consent line by line, in English, including the paragraphs nobody enjoys. I asked her to stop twice. She did. A nurse on the ward had good English too. When I came round, the first voice I heard said my name and told me it had gone well. I asked for an arm lift. An arm lift is what was booked, quoted and done. He asked what was bothering me most. I said my arms. That was the end of it. No extra on the bill.
The hour with Leeds
I’d stopped believing testimonials. I asked for a woman who’d had a long scar down the inside of her arm. They put me through to someone in Leeds who’d had hers the year before. We were on the phone for the best part of an hour. The first three days. Whether you need somebody with you. Where the scar sits now. Whether you can feel the whole of your arm. She was honest, including the miserable days, and she sent a photo at eleven months. Nearly everything she described is what my own arms went on to do. That call is why I booked.
I’ve got a thin pale line on the inside of each arm. I waved at somebody across the car park last week and nothing carried on moving afterwards. Arm lift Just Clinic Istanbul on the papers means they organised the trip. The name on the consent was the person in theatre.
