Ordering parts

June 6, 2011 Mom’s Birthday

I’m training on the telephone & web, waiting for a break, watching for calls to come in on my cell or office phone. I see that Dr. C’s office is calling and take a break to take the call. It’s Dr. C – I move to an office where I can talk in private. We talk again about the concerns with both implant options. We talk about Dr. I’s surgical approach. But honestly, we don’t know what we will be able to do until we get in to surgery. Dr. C follows Dr. I and works with whatever Dr. I has already done. Thank goodness, they have worked with each other often in the past. We agree that since we don’t really know what is possible until right during surgery that whatever Dr. C needs to do for the best outcome in relationship to both the disease and the reconstruction I need to trust him to do. I had come to that conclusion on my own over the weekend. He says that even if Dr. I leaves the nipple, if he isn’t comfortable with the blood flow to the area, he will not save it. I’m ok with that. He will have something of everything available that we might need in the OR. If we are lucky, we can do this reconstruction in one stage!

Now, I’m still thinking about art. I tell Dr. C I have a request that may seem a little strange, I’d like a picture of that tumor – for art. He laughs, says he can get as good of a picture as I’d want of that tumor with his cell phone. Leave a note on the chart. And, oh, he’s an artist. Painting, fly tying, and encaustic art. That reassures me – at least the fly tying does. It sounds like precision work to me. And I’ve recently learned about encaustic art from my April trip to NM. http://www.eainm.com/eai_encaustic.html Here’s a blog of an artist http://weepingwax.blogspot.com/ with photos. I feel reassured that I am in good hands, even more so than after our initial visit. There is one caveat to that – if you do my kind of art, symmetry is a difficult concept (probably because I have a hard time achieving it), and sometimes I like to leave loose ends (because I don't know what to do with them). I’d hate to see my kind of art expressed in reconstructive work. A nipple pointing in the wrong direction from the wrong location of the breast. Just got a new inspiration!

Surgery is scheduled for June 10 4:30 pm. Sounds like I’ll be awake and hungry during the day time! Guess that's ok, because the whole point here is just to get this critter out of me.