Carmella, who is a teacher, turned to Dr. Tommaso Addona for all of her procedures

NEED TO KNOW

• Carmella’s PMOS diagnosis and fertility treatments contributed to weight gain before she lost more than 100 lbs.
• Her surgeries with Dr. Tommaso Addona included a breast reduction, tummy tuck and thigh lift to remove loose skin and contour her body
• The teacher says family support helped her prioritize her health while raising two children

Carmella’s transformation all began with a PCOS diagnosis.

As a young athlete, she discovered a large cyst and later received a polycystic ovary syndrome diagnosis — now commonly known as polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) — which led to weight gain. Because of her active lifestyle, her weight didn’t fluctuate too much. It all changed, though, after she got married and wanted to have children.

After experiencing a bout of not being able to get pregnant, she was put on hormones that made her weight “blow up” because she “so badly wanted a child.” The treatments were successful, though, and she had a son and daughter. However, through all of this, she says she gained “a ton of weight.”

After years of working at it, Carmella, 45, was about to lose over 100 lbs., but it left her with loose skin, mostly in her abdominal region and legs. She chose to seek out a plastic surgeon to begin another transformation, this time to address the sagging skin. She turned to Dr. Tommaso Addona, MD, FACS, board-certified plastic surgeon based in New York City, specializing in cosmetic breast surgery, body contouring and facial rejuvenation.

Carmella began with a breast reduction in 2019. Despite her fluctuating weight, she says she always had large breasts. Once she was smaller overall, her breasts in particular felt overwhelming.

“I had always wanted a reduction, and it was something I had always said to my mom,” Carmella tells PEOPLE. “So when I went to Dr. Addona and I just said, ‘Listen, I’m getting these headaches, my back hurts.’ We were able to have a breast reduction just based upon my medical needs. So I was really big, probably like a G. And we went down to like a C.”

Her breast surgery also included a bit of liposuction, which Dr. Addona says is an added touch he feels is a good complement to a breast reduction.

“Usually, along with [a breast reduction], we do some liposuction to the outer aspects, where a lot of my patients will just refer to it as a side boob,” Dr. Addona explains. “So we’ll do liposuction out there just to complete the contour for a breast reduction. And that overall helps reshape the breast itself, reduce lift and have them be more confident.”

In 2020, Carmella went back to Dr. Addona for more procedures, this time an abdominoplasty and liposuction of the flanks. Together, this would address the loose skin on her stomach and contouring of her waist. The pain of the tummy tuck was tough but manageable, she says, comparing it to a “C-section on steroids.”

“My results were instant, but I was still very swollen,” she says of how she felt in the days after surgery. “So I was very, very flat. I liked the contouring. I had a shape. I already felt like I had this relief that I was going to be able to exercise and be able to move and just feel good in my clothes and feel confident in myself.”

Dr. Addona also fixed Carmella’s diastasis recti, a separation of her ab muscles as a result of pregnancy, during this procedure. He says doing this all at once typically goes “very well” for patients.

“I use liposuction not only in the flanks, but also within the abdominal skin to reshape or recontour it,” he explains. “And then also, a new location for the belly button. It’s the same belly button, common misconception, but it’s basically relocated in a more favorable, youthful position on the abdomen. So you combine those procedures with the tightening of the internal muscle, the six-pack muscles, and you basically create an internal corset, a more shapely abdomen, lower abdomen.”

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Carmella didn’t stop there, though. In 2021, she went back for another combo, this time a medial thigh lift and posterior torso lift. This all targeted her back and lower body, removing excess skin from her inner thighs, lower back and butt. This procedure combo would also contour those areas.

“That was the hardest of the [surgeries] because I couldn’t lie on my back because I had my back done, but I couldn’t sit in the recliner because I had my thighs done. So it was very tricky,” she says.

Dr. Addona explains that with the thigh lift, there is essentially an unavoidable scar that comes along with it and has been known as a difficult procedure.

“It’s inherently a procedure that you have to use a scar that we’d like to avoid,” he says. “So imagine the inseam of someone’s jeans, right on the inner thigh, from the knee to the kind of groin crease, that’s in theory where the scar is going to need to sit in some capacity. And then we need a crease up higher in the groin crease, almost like an underwear line, to pull up the skin. So you need to remove tissue both in the horizontal and vertical direction, and this is after a fair amount of liposuction to remove the volume from that tissue. When it comes to a thighplasty or a medial thigh lift, it’s really removing the skin, the fat, and the tissue all around there.”

The torso lift, he explains, is similar to a breast reduction but on the back. The scar is left where a bra sits, so it is hidden under the band.

Carmella, who is a teacher, loves the procedures she’s had so far and still has more on her list for other parts of her body that she wants to tweak. Because she’s had such a great support system at home, she feels confident in having another procedure done.

“I was really, really excited,” she says of going into each procedure thus far. “I was nervous at first because I do have two kids, and back when I had my first surgery six years ago, my oldest was 9 and my youngest was 8, so they needed their mom. But I also felt that they needed a mom that could play with them and be there for them. And so my husband and I had discussed that we really needed to put my health first in this situation so I could be the best parent that I could be to our two children. And that was really important.”

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