Wined and Dined

A common complaint you hear from people is that they feel like their surgeons aren't nearly as attentive to them post-surgery as they were pre-surgery. The surgeons tell them how great and how life-changing the surgery will be, then afterwards, when the patients are disappointed with the results, they are like, 'Oh, oops, a lot of times it doesn't work! Read the fine print!' In other words, people feel wined and dined, then discarded. Of course, there are always two sides to every story, just sayin'. This seems to be a not-rare (even if not super common) thing in orthopedics; I'm sure we all know someone who had a semi-elective surgery for an orthopedic condition that didn't really do anything. (I say semi-elective because as someone who suffers from a painful orthopedic condition, I understand that just because something won't kill you, it's not really 'elective' if you want to give yourself a chance of continuing to live a normal life.)

Although I have little experience with plastic surgeons, they seem like they might be a wine you and dine you group of individuals. I've always been wary of plastic surgeons, although I now realize that many of them do much more noble things than just cosmetic surgeries. Many of them reconstruct people's faces after horrific accidents, many treat patients with severe burns, and many treat cancer patients. Technically, breast reconstruction after a mastectomy is an elective surgery, even though is far from the same thing as an elective breast augmentation, IMO.

I'm starting to worry that I've been wined and dined by Dr. T. I mean, I don't feel purposely deceived or anything. This wouldn't be logical considering it was just dumb luck that got me face time with Dr. T in the first place, and he had about 15 minutes to review my case before I saw him. It's just that maybe he has one of those magnetic personalities that makes a person a successful winer and diner, one that sucks people in immediately, whether intentional or not. Being in academia, I'm constantly told that students decide within the first five minutes of the first class whether or not they like you. Or is it two minutes? Or 30 seconds? Whatever. It's not a long time. But the point is, despite the fact that I'm sure someone got a doctorate in education for figuring this out, there is probably some truth to it. LOL.

Needless to say, as time passes and my anxiety levels rise, I'm feeling less love toward Dr. T, and more distrust. I don't know if this is rational or not; hopefully not. I sent him an angst-y e-mail on Friday about what, if anything, I needed to do to arrange to see this hematologist colleague of his, and to be fair, he did e-mail me back on Saturday morning to let me know that they would call me. And to be fair, they did call me today. And they told me the first appointment they had was August 27th. Ummm, okay, that's... not helpful. But apparently Dr. T just submitted a referral for a 'routine consult.' So basically I threw a hissy fit and told the woman I had breast cancer and was scheduled for a mastectomy August 26th, and got myself an appointment on August 10th. But still, I'm feeling somewhat annoyed and wary that Dr. T is the one who is making me see this guy - and it can't be just any hematologist, but it has to be this supposedly Top Anticoagulant Hematologist - but yet I'm the one having to throw a hissy fit to get an early enough appointment. We seem to moving at the pace of an elective cosmetic surgery, not a patient has cancer and had one positive margin after the first surgery, and three positive margins a month later, so we need to GET THIS SHIT OUT OF HER ASAP surgery. Yes, the reconstruction is elective, but the mastectomy is mandatory. So either way, the breast has to be amputated on August 26th, and the surgeons themselves are the ones telling me that if I'm going to do reconstruction, I'll be much better off doing it at the time of the mastectomy. As Dr. L would say, argggg and poop.

I'm also a little disconcerted about this late date considering I really cannot do any appointments August 12-18, and what if this guy wants to do more tests? Like... is he magically going to look at me and tell me I'm either okay or not okay? Or have he and Dr. T already decided I'm NOT okay to do this surgery, and Dr. T doesn't want to tell me, so he is making his colleague tell me? (This is what I fear the most.) What exactly am I supposed to be discussing with this guy? A little guidance might be nice. As Dr. Evil would say:

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At any rate, I've decided to be proactive, because for me, planning helps alleviate stress. If I really do have a clotting disorder, I want to know sooner rather than later. Definitely not just a few days before surgery, at which point I have no idea what I'd do. If Dr. T feels like it is a real possibility that I can't do this type of reconstruction, I want to know NOW. Even if it's just something like a 10 or 20% chance, I want to know. I at least want to know what he is thinking, even if it is bad. I am okay with bad, as long as it's not out of the blue and completely unexpected. So I called Dr. A, my PCP, today and requested to have my blood tested for clotting disorders. We actually talked about this a while ago, before I knew I had cancer, just because this is something you should know about even if you don't have cancer. I couldn't do it while I was taking Xarelto, though, and I think he said I needed to be off Xarelto for a month before we could do the test? Anyway, I've been off Xarelto for over a month, and figure this is one thing I can take care of immediately, with my PCP. After some ado, I got an appointment to go in on Wednesday for a blood draw. 

I also e-mailed Dr. L over the weekend about whether it would really be possible for her to do routine post-mastectomy care for me, and what, if anything, I would need to do to arrange for this to happen. I haven't heard back from her, so I guess we will see if she is a winer and diner, too! All in all, I'm feeling extremely angst-y and somewhat disillusioned. I guess one thing that's becoming really clear right now is that this is going to be an adventure until the bitter end. Maybe I'll talk to my PCP about the anti-anxiety meds after all.