Big fat "NO" from our surgeon

Dr. Chisholm finally got back to us today after almost 3 weeks of waiting. He refused to do an areola-sparing mastectomy and I'm pretty sure he doesn't know what one is, he has it confused with a nipple-sparing procedure. He's very "old school" and that's starting to grate on us too. And for icing on the cake he refused to let us even talk to another surgeon at his office. He even went so far as to say that if we had surgery at his hospital he'd be the one doing it.

We are fed up with him. We called our plastic surgeon back and asked for a referral for another doctor and got one the next day.

BRCA test comes back

We're really relieved to hear I'm BRCA negative, I don't have the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation that enables many cancers, particularly breast and ovarian, at a young age. The test was somehow mis-handled and reported back to the wrong doctor. Add a few missed phone calls and we wound up waiting an extra month for these results.

Well the plastic surgeon is ready...

Our plastic surgeon called to tell us he has an opening next week. But our surgeon hasn't answered us about what mastectomy he's willing to do. Our other surgeon (at the same office) has not called us back either. So we could get this over with 4 days from now but we can't get any love from Dr. Chisholm's office. We're getting more and more tired of being ignored by him and his staff.

Can we change doctors?

Today we called again to try an get an appointment with a surgeon that we've been told can do the areola-sparing mastectomy. Unfortunately he's in the same group as our present surgeon and the staff there are not making it easy for us to "jump ship" to the new doctor. The staff there are awful and take days to return phone calls.

Followup with surgeon

I meet with the surgeon finally and he seems very annoyed that we're considering the areola-sparing mastectomy and he pushes hard for us to abandon it. He doesn't say "no" but he sure did not seem to want to do it.

We call our plastic surgeon to find some surgeons who know how to do it. The first one he mentions is right here in the same surgical group as our Dr. Chisholm. This will be tricky.

Meet plastic surgeon #5

Today we met yet another plastic surgeon, the last on our list but the one we heard the most good things about. The recommendations were right, he, his office, and staff seem to be focused on making women look good. He talks to us like real people but explains everything too. We're getting to be old hands at breast reconstruction options now. He tells us there is a way to perhaps spare most of the nipple and then use a bit of the other nipple to help reconstruct. We're thrilled because most of the tattoo jobs we saw photos of were not natural looking. Even if none of that works out we're pretty sure we've found our plastic surgeon.

We called our surgeon to see what he thought but it would be almost a week before we can even talk to him.

First trip to Mayo

Today we went to Mayo to interview a surgeon for our mastectomy and also a plastic surgeon for reconstruction. We left thinking that Mayo is fairly conservative for a "clinic". But it has some powerful advantages in having a team approach to every patient and having all your records on one computer system. If we have to have chemotherapy or any long-term treatment, Mayo seems like the logical choice.