After surgery, woman discovers her belly button is gone

"I said, 'Well damn … wait, where is my belly button?'" That's Lori Jones describing her reaction to her post-surgery discovery that her navel was no more.

Hoping to don a two-piece bathing suit this summer, the 45-year-old Houston woman in December underwent the removal of an umbilical hernia and had a tummy tuck to get rid of her C-section-related "baby pooch," KTRK reports.

A month later it was time to remove the surgical tape. Jones, "thinking my belly button is there," found out that it was not. And she has questions for renowned plastic surgeon Younan Nowzardan, who performed the surgery: "What happened to it? Did you throw it in the trash?" Nowzardan, however, tells KTRK he informed Jones that, because of a preexisting scar, the belly button was going to go.

"We can call Hollywood and get an Oscar nomination for her," he says, adding that he can go back in and give Jones a new belly button.

But Jones says she has contacted an attorney and wants to settle the issue in court. Her displeasure notwithstanding, Jones is not alone in being belly-button-less.

Fashion model Karolina Kurkova, for instance, is lacking a navel because of a surgery she had as an infant, the New York Daily News noted when this odd fact made headlines a few years ago.

The BBC also looked into the issue, explaining that in addition to surgery, another factor sometimes at play is a "lotus birth"—in which the umbilical cord and placenta are left to drop off on their own.

(Cosmetic surgery turned this woman into a kleptomaniac.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: First Post-Op Question: Where's My Belly Button?

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