Sleeping Dogs

I drove up to 'the city' (no, not 'The City' as in New York City) today for a check-up with Dr. T. It was pretty uneventful. You may recall (though probably not) that I was super duper sick the last time I saw Dr. T, the type of sick that results from drinking waaaaaaay too much wine the night before. (On a side note, my book club friends and I were just reminiscing about this night, and how ridiculously drunk we were. Much to my relief, none of them remember the conversation we had in the midst of our drunkenness, during which I know I shared way too much. The moral of the story is: if you tend to overshare when you're drunk, be sure that everyone around you is just as drunk.) YEAH SO ANYWAY, I was just as sick at today's appointment, only not because I was hung over. Unfortunately, I'm just sick with your run of the mill crapola, which by itself isn't awful. However, I've got a raging case of laryngitis going on, too, to the extent that I can only sometimes talk above a whisper. And when I can, it takes a lot of energy and my voice comes and goes and basically it's pretty horrible. I'm sure some of it has to do with the fact that I teach, and therefore spend a good deal of time each day yelling talking in a loud voice so people can hear me, and I tend to lose my voice even when I'm not sick.

Needless to say, I was not in the mood to drive 60 miles to go see Dr. T. Also, we've gotten a lot of snow in the past week, and driving around my town is a super bitch, so I left way too much time to get to my appointment. Once I got out of town, the roads were fine, and as I approached the city, I found myself with 40 extra minutes to kill. So I did what anyone with obsessive organizing behavior would do: I went to The Container Store. I've never been a Container Store before, though I've read about them in magazines, and driven past them before, and after I went in, I was glad we don't have one in my town, because I'm pretty sure I could spend my whole paycheck there. Fortunately, I didn't have time to do anything but walk around the store with my mouth wide open before I had to get back in the car and drive back to The Breast Center.

I started off the appointment with Dr. T's PA (this must be a new thing?), but it worked out nicely because she did a brief exam, then when Dr. T came in, I didn't feel as self-conscious because she had already seen my boobs, so whatever. And because she was female, there was apparently no need to call in another chaperone. Dr. T basically thought everything looked good, more or less, and reiterated his 'offer' to do revision surgery. In contrast to what Dr. L told me, he said that swelling in the reconstructed breast goes down by three months, so basically what I have now is what I'll have forever... unless I do something about it ( = I'm bigger on my left side than on my natural side). He also noted that my abdominal scar and scar around my belly button were thicker than normal ( = really f-ing ugly), which I was glad to hear, because I think my scars are ugly as hell, but as I've learned, what I find appalling is actually normal in many cases. This is the shit no one tells you about.

Interestingly, Dr. T told me the scarring was normal for 'Asian skin,' and, 'The same thing that makes us look young for so long also causes the scarring.' I found his use of 'us' amusing, and also wondered if this wasn't something he was just making up. After all, as the hematologist he sent me to said, 'Sometimes medical people just make things up.' We then had a conversation about looking young and getting carded, and he said his wife loves getting carded.

Eventually he suggested that I let him inject a steroid into my scar to help reduce it, and ordered some from the nearby pharmacy. This would also help with the intense itching I'm experiencing as the feeling returns to my abdomen. So while I braced myself for the pain of a steroid injection, Dr. T then decided against doing the injection today, saying that he wanted to get approval from my insurance first. 'Steroids are actually very cheap, but insurance companies charge a lot for them, and I don't want you to get an outrageous charge,' he said.

Somewhere in all of this, we discussed the lecture that he is going to give at my school in April, and he basically asked me for my advice. He noted that a lot of his slides are a bit graphic (ummmm, yes, I've seen some), and I told him he should definitely take those out. I told him that his talk should appeal to a broad audience, and very few people will be hard core medicine types. And furthermore, 'A lot of people will be eating dinner while you're giving your talk.' After I said this, he replied, 'I'm so glad we're having this conversation right now!' Then he added, 'I have a talk that I give to potential donors; I think I'll give that one instead of what I was planning.' Needless to say, I'm now a little bit stressed out about what exactly he is going to talk about/show - eeeeeeeeek. At the very least, it will probably give me something interesting to blog about. :)

In the end, I told him that I was still considering revision surgery, but that it really couldn't happen before summer, as I don't have that type of time off of work. He said I'd be out for a week, then added, 'maybe two,' neither of which I can do at this point. Anyway, I'm going to go with Dr. L's advice and wait a bit longer, just because. Because I'm pretty happy right now, and I'm not anxious to have more surgery. And so that is that. For now, anyway.

I'm torn between my tendency of the past to go for the gold ( = perfection) and my gut feeling to leave well enough alone and let sleeping dogs lie. Meanwhile, I'm thankful that the biggest thing in my medical life right now is something so trivial as having a C cup on one side and a B cup on the other. As I tell my students almost every day, it's all relative.