Plastic Surgery and the order of things

Plastic Surgery Planning

Yesterday was day 7 since chemo and the first day I felt 99% well. Yay - although this was a longer recovery for some reason. My body felt better at day 4 but my razor blade mouth, tongue and gums, eye watering, nose drying and a new one - red flushing rash on my face. Yay - that goes well with my hot flushes of enforced menopause But the best thing.....I don't need to use blush anymore!!! So when you have 1 problem, it's fixed by something else yet to come !!! Ha, ha. Chemo makes your skin go a bit yellow so I've been using more blush than normal, until now. :p

After the appointment with the public hospital plastic surgeon, waiting 2 hours and being bumped to a different dr's list, I started to feel nervous about public. Then when meeting with the plastic surgeon, I got the feeling they wouldn't look at anything outside the way they have always done it and the new technologies available were not yet allowed in the public system.

In the meantime, after seeing Damien grinsell, a plastic surgeon privately, he had taken the initiative and contacted my breast surgeon for a discussion and had written a detailed report to my GP. Even though I hadn't decided to go with him yet and had a tentative 2nd appointment booked, by the time I got to see my breast surgeon privately, she was okay with everything that he was proposing, even though the order of things will be changed on his request. 

I was stressed about asking her about changing up the order, whether she could work with him, can they work in the same hospital etc.,. But it was all taken away, when she opened with that she had spoken to him and she is happy to work with him and even suggested if I'm happy not to keep looking as he is one of the best. He teaches in internationally and has championed this method here in Australia. So everything fell into place and we are going with the private system and I will be wearing our trip to America on my chest!!!! Ouch...$$$$$ or Alexander's 1st year of high school tuition fees and then some....😯

My priority was just to get the cancer out of my body, but then you also want to look as normal as possible under clothes. And then your next consideration is minimal surgeries, best up-to-the-minute methods being used to minimize management impact on your life long term. Then there's implants versus autologous (my own skin/muscle) which all going well, will require no future maintenance like implants do. I just want minimal surgeries and get it finished with an end date. Albeit, a major surgery with a longer recovery, but then it's all over!

So the Order of things has been changed as Public won't do radiotherapy on an intact cancer ridden breast it must be removed first, so this is a new technique where everyone is in agreement that it won't make any difference to getting the cancer cells and Damien has performed 31 of these so far with good results. I guess it's a bit like me having had chemo first (neoadjuvent) before mastectomy which is a new technique so they can see how chemo effects the tumours. Otherwise they are only guessing by taking it off first and its an insurance policy of chemo after mastectomy as they don't know the impact of chemo. New order:

- radiotherapy, December/January??

- surgery February 2016

It sounds like this will speed up everything and surgery will be done all at once rather than a 2 stage process. Well I'm just guessing, so a meeting next Tuesday with Damien Grinsell will confirm everything and book it all in. 

Anyway until Tuesday, I'll know more....