I had a consultation with my plastic surgeon last week. Her name is Marga Massey. I love her. Honestly, it seems like I've been saying that about all my doctors, but I really have been really lucky to find some amazing specialists. Several years ago, when Neil got sick, it seemed like we had to go through at least 5 idiots for every 1 doctor that was even semi-helpful. But then, he was seeing neurologists and neurosurgeons. I'm seeing oncologists and cancer surgeons. I think we learned that Utah is not a great place to be if you have neurological issues, but it's one of the best places to be if you have Cancer.
Anyway, my plastic surgeon does consults in Salt Lake, but her surgeries are done in New Orleans, South Carolina and sometimes Chicago. My consultation with her was over the phone. When making the arrangements, I asked her assistant, "How exactly is that going to work? Doesn't she need to see... stuff?" "Oh yes," she replies, "we're going to need pictures. Neck to knee, front and back." Pictures?!?! So I took some pictures of myself. Thank heavens for self timers on cameras. I think it is safe to say that was the singlemost depressing moment of my life.... When I was done and had given her the copies I burned onto a CD for her, I deleted them from my camera. Then, just to be safe, I reformatted my memory card. Then, it was all I could do not to run my computer down to the local techie shop and have the entire hard drive wiped, reformatted, and reimaged. But I didn't. However, I will personally be burning that particular computer when we end up replacing it with a new one. . . just to be sure... Bonfire. In the backyard. Seriously.
I met Dr. Massey at a dinner for the Young Survivor Sisters. They have one every year and Dr. Massey sponsors it. She spoke for a few minutes about her work to develop a procedure of transplanting lymph nodes to alleviate symptoms of Lymphedema, which often develops in cancer patients who have undergone mastectomies where they had lymph nodes removed. It's pretty amazing actually.
Just as a little side note, at that same dinner, a woman named Linda Hill spoke. She was named 2010's Wasatch Woman of the Year. She told us her story, beginning with when she was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in her chest at the age of 19. It was growing around her windpipe, slowly suffocating her to death. She underwent the full gammet of cancer treatment. Since that time, she has continued to battle with various forms of cancer. She has gone through chemotherapy 4 times and has had various surgeries. She has had her thyroid removed, ovaries removed, breasts removed, and colon removed. After explaining all that she stopped and we were all just looking at her in awe at how she survived all that, but she just continued by saying, "And I'm fine!!. You people are walking around with a whole lot of crap that you don't need!" It was a really nice evening and she really gave us a lot of things to think about to keep the whole cancer thing in perspective. She was amazing. If I hadn't felt like a whiney baby about my health lot in life before I heard her speak, I certainly did after. And somehow in the middle of that she managed to have 7 children. Yikes.
Anyway, back to Dr. Massey. She helped me figure a few things out. It helps that she is good friends with Dr. Neumayer, the surgeon that will be doing my mastectomy. She said that they would get together over the phone and discuss the particulars before she got back to me, but generally I think I've decided to do a single mastectomy on the 18th and have a skin expander inserted (more details on that one later). Then by the time I am ready for reconstruction, Dr. Massey will remove the expander in the cancer breast as well as perform a mastectomy on the other breast and reconstruct both breasts at the same time. Still up in the air over whether or not I'll be doing radiation. So that's where I'm at so far.
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