Should I have liposuction for lipedema?

What you should consider before deciding on having surgery

Other articles in this series
How to choose the right plastic surgeon?
How to prepare for liposuction?
How to get lipedema surgery covered by health insurance

Last year, I wrote an article here on Medium about getting diagnosed with lipedema (or lipoedema), a disease that’s also known as “painful fat syndrome,” a relatively unknown fat disorder. Even though most people have never heard of lipedema, including doctors, the disease is far from being rare. Actually, lipedema is estimated to affect around 11% of the female population, but most patients have no idea they have a disease. They just think they have “fat legs” or “thick legs,” and attribute it to genetics.

Lipedema fat doesn’t respond to any kind of diet or exercise, so the only way to remove it is through liposuction. Removing the fat surgically not only reverses some of the damage already done by the disease, minimizing symptoms like pain, but in most cases, it also stops the progression, which is critical, because with time lipedema can become a disability.

That’s why, to me, making the decision to have liposuction was a no brainer. I knew I had to do it as soon as I…