The Third Medical Opinion

I hope you aren’t on the edge of your seat thinking.. ok now she will finally get a medical opinion that is thinking outside the box… because you will be disappointed I’m afraid.

I decided to take my case to one more surgeon and this surgeon was recommended by my Aunt. She had gone to the first surgeon and found him to be a callous and egotistical cad and I tended to agree with her on that so I felt I would also like this third surgeon. I met with him on August 11th.

I did indeed like him a lot. He is very humble and respectful and he entertained my many questions that had formed about all this for way over the typical amount of time allocated for a patient. I felt he understood my objections and he expressed his own doubts and questions about some of the treatments and why they are used. He supported my desire to just get a lumpectomy only and did not try to make me feel I was making a poor choice. I scheduled a lumpectomy with him for August 21st.

In my hours of research, I had discovered an article on timing of surgery for women and that article recommended surgery for women in the first part of their menstrual cycle, pre-ovulation. So any surgery I schedule, I did so with that in mind. The article stated that women who had surgery in pre-ovulation part of their cycle had quicker recovery time and better surgical outcome.

The lumpectomy was to be an outpatient procedure using “twilight” sedation vs general anesthesia. I would be semi-conscious but I wouldn’t care that he was cutting a piece of flesh out of my breast. I called to find out my choices for sedation and researched them as well.

Having an aversion to most drugs, I still didn’t like the thought of being anesthesized and I certainly did not relish the idea of being exposed to potential infection from the surgery. However, part of me was relieved to be finally getting rid of the lump and finally being able to see what it was.