(this was written yesterday, posted today)
This am at 10 o'clock I was to see the plastic surgeon again.
That anxiety was building up again and I couldn't help myself. I picked up the phone and called the gals over at the Cancer clinic. A fleeting thought "they are going to hate me there - I call them so much" and the phone went straight through to the original gal at the desk that I talked to on Friday.
I explained what happened to the non existent surgeon's dictation and told her I was feeling like I was in limbo land. "As an RN, you know where my head is going...."
Then good news.
The gal had actually put my file through - after I talked to her on Monday - to the Oncologist and he had dictated a letter.....she told me she was going to make sure it was transcribed and faxed over to the plastic surgeon's office immediately so it would be there by my 10 am appointment. "Your MD will know exactly what to do when he gets the letter...." she reassured me.
Sigh of relief. Do those gals know how much I appreciate their efforts? That it meant the world to me?
My RN girlfriend who offered to accompany me to the Plastic surgeon's office arrived at 8:30 on the dot. Well, maybe a couple minutes early. She's a lot like me.
We sat and had coffee and discussed our tactics for the MD's visit. I told her to ask him how many surgeries he had done, since there was no trace of him on the internet. We both laughed over that one, but I was serious. I did want to know but in a way that didn't make his hands unsteady in surgery.
I had already phoned the one number I could find on the internet associated with my young doc - an office in San Francisco where he served a one year fellowship. (By the way, the young receptionist's enthusiastic review would have matched my own - about 30 years ago!! Oh well. It was worth a try.)
We arrived the usual 15 minutes early for my appointment. Tiptoeing up to the receiving desk, I asked politely if the report had arrived from the Cancer clinic....and all I got was a curt "You can take a seat"....she didn't even look up.
The Plastic surgeon more than made up for the cold greeting. I explained about being in limbo and how it was messing with my head and how I am now heavily medicated (well, to my standards anyway) and I feel this is going nowhere. I reminded him that he was the one who told me I would have to be my own advocate.
He agreed. We discussed (the three of us) the best way to approach the surgery and we decided that it would be the best to have him decide when he got right in there...whether he was just going to do a 5 sq cm graft where he dug out the melanoma, or whether he was going to do the flap surgery...cutting up beside my ear, in the crease of my lower lid above the cheekbone and beside my nose...and sliding over the skin. Donor skin, either way, would be my neck.
I didn't want to decide and be left with "what if" after the fact.
I just wanted the surgery done and the cancer out.
I did ask him if he was going to leave my dimple in.
"Don't worry, I will make it all pretty"
I squinted at him.."Pretty was perhaps what I was when I was in my 20s....I think I am beyond that...but hey, if you think you can do it, take a stab at it!"
I can't believe I am almost excited that on Friday the 25th, I am going to be turned into Frankenstein.
I'm going to Disneyland!
2 comments:
So, did you GF get her assigned question in? Sounds like this young Dr. has a good dollop of empathy and is cheerfully engaged in his occupation. I hope the most he has to do is the 5 square. One hopes his receptionist takes a course in humanism at some point in the near future.
ha! we didn't get to ask the question, but I did tell him it's ok to "practice" on me...to which he made suggestion that he had experience doing it. I am thinking, from my 37 years of nursing experience and observation, that he's done the procedure at least 2 or 3 times...LOL!!!!
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