Ah, spring. That sweet time of year when the birds start looking for singing contracts again, green leaf buds are starting to sprout (the ones on trees-since this is CO, I feel the need to distinguish), and your (insert favorite baseball team here) are gearing up for a loooonnnnggg season of playing some hardball.
Oh, and women everywhere with faux boobs begin dreading the season that will follow – swimsuit season. Or, maybe that’s just me.
I’m not sure why baseball metaphors are all up in my brain right now. Maybe it’s thanks to our Colorado Boulders Rockies having kicked off what will for sure be their season for going on all the way. Or maybe it’s because baseball is such a great metaphor for life – some days you knock it out of the park and others, well, you may never leave the dugout. If you’ll forgive me, I’m just going to go with it for now and and see how it all plays out. (Hee hee, yea I kinda like these).
As we are likely all aware (and if you’re not, see here), I will not be returning to my original plastic surgeon (PS) for my reconstruction revisions because, well, for many reasons she clearly was not a good fit. She’s getting traded folks and sent back down to the minors. But who would be a good fit? It would take a lot of scouting, but the time had come to find out. So I decided to swing for well beyond the infield and meet with several doctors who would be trying out for the job: doctors who specialized in tissue flaps and who might be a good match personally. Denver is a large city, but actually feels pretty small when looking with that criteria in mind. For some reason, Colorado isn’t a hugely popular plastic surgery state like California and Utah. (Yup, Utah. I’ll let y’all figure that one out for yourselves.)
So I also opened the field to outside of Colorado to expand my options. There is one I’ve seriously considered; a dedicated breast surgery hospital down in New Orleans. Coming home with more beads AND brand new boobs is certainly appealing, but I’m not sure if 1) the hassle of traveling back and forth would be too daunting for further consideration and 2) what travel costs insurance would cover. Right now, I think I want to keep home field advantage.
The first PS on the roster got to 2nd base, but he wasn’t special. He basically threw up god hands and said that whatever he did, I was probably not going to be happy. Mmmm’kay. He followed that in his highly professional opinion, my implants looked great and I should be more than happy with them. Okay, he didn’t really say all of that, not exactly anyway, but that is definitely the feeling I got from him. With my eyes welling up and feeling desperate for help, I told him that I’d rather be flat than have these softballs on my chest anymore. How can a doctor hear that coming from a (relatively) young, healthy woman and not be moved to do everything in his power to help, even if that means referring me to someone else?! Game was called due to a rain delay caused by my subsequent tears. (I should say that this guy has high ratings and a friend recently used him for her prophylactic mastectomy and reconstruction, and by all accounts, is very happy with him. I’m very thankful he is a great fit for her and it’s understandable that no doctor would be a good fit for everyone.) Quite the curve ball; swing and a miss.
The 2nd PS was incredibly warm & kind. She agreed they were still sitting pretty high at this point, but she didn’t do tissue surgeries much and wanted me to go with just fat grafting, which would lessen the ridge between my chest and the top of my implants. Apparently I had enough belly for that since it didn’t take nearly as much. This was an appealing option. Why not try that before going all out and replacing them completely? BUT researching fat grafting later, what she didn’t mention was that if that wasn’t enough to “fix” things, that I would no longer be a candidate for the hybrid tissue/implant surgery having taken a majority of fat from my abdomen and the subsequent tissue scarring. Next batter up…
The 3rd may just be the one to hit a home run. Confident, not egotistical. Funny, but not uncaring or dismissive. He’s the colleague of my previous PS and is the one who actually suggested doing the hybrid tissue/implant for me. He performs his breast tissue surgeries with a colleague, the head of the PS department, because it’s such a long, technically difficult surgery, so two supremely talented docs for the price of one! Soft salary cap be damned. Dr. C is also extremely busy, which means he’s that good and was booking well into 2019 when we met late in 2018. But something seemed a bit off…foul ball.
I had originally canceled the 4th, because while the doctor is a seriously heavy hitter (well known in the state for breast/tissue surgeries), they currently only accept one insurance company, because they do mostly breast augmentations, I think. Ours was, unfortunately, not it. Going out of network for such an expensive “cosmetic” surgery is really not an option. Strike out.
But wait. The game is going into extra innings and that practice is now in active discussions with our insurance company. They can’t say when a deal might be hammered out though…could be a couple of months or next year. Show them the money, big bad insurance company! So just in case they do decide to play ball together, I recently had a consultation with one of the doctors to see if it might be worth it to wait. It might. In addition to be a caring doctor, he told me my surgery would be much shorter (more like 6 hours) and subsequently, my hospital stay would be shorter, as well. Hmm..
Recently met the 5th and last candidate. (Yes, five, I wasn’t kidding around this time.) While she wasn’t super warm, she was very professional and kind, taking lots of time looking and thinking, discussing options and most importantly, listening. She does believe that tissue would be a very good option for me and would likely achieve most of what I’m looking for. However, another curve ball…she said that she had recently decided to focus entirely on her burn reconstruction patients and would no longer be doing breast surgeries. She said she wanted to meet me though so she could recommend a PS who specialized in achieving my #boobgoals and actually referred me back to PS #4 and PS #3’s colleague who would be performing the surgery with him. Game over. With her anyway.
Ok, enough of the sports metaphors. Bottom of the ninth and here I am again. (Opps.) Back at home plate. (Sorry.) Having to immerse myself in the multitude of options with none being a bases loaded home run situation. (Seriously? Sorry. Again.)
So the good news is that I’m currently scheduled with PS#3 this month which is the FIRST available date he had back when we met in December. The hesitation now stems from knowing for certain that I do want to do everything this year or wait until 2020, because certainly there’s no rush now from a medical perspective. In addition to working on getting a new business off the ground, we’re planning on moving into a new condo late this year and need to continue to seriously eliminate the many, many cardboard boxes in the garage, as well as downsize, selling furniture, etc. And, in order to avoid having to put the house on the market during the slower Fall/Winter season, we may decide we need to put the house on the market in late Spring/early Summer. Unfortunately, because the condo is still being built, we have no idea if the move in date will stay on schedule and thinking about the end of the year already is giving me heart palpitations! Before we know it, it’ll be Christmas again. Inconceivable! (Ooo, a Princess Bride reference. I’m all over the field here, guys. Ok. Truly the last one.)
So, is my Dr. Right out there? I have to believe he is. (Was kinda hoping he’d be a she, but hey, they both have Dr. in front of their last name.) Stay tuned!