127. Speaking and Listening

Today it’s the plastic consultant.  I know she’s a woman but that’s it. 

Long, long wait.  They’re running almost an hour late. 

Finally I’m called in.  She’s youngish but confident.  She asks me what I want.  Nice boobs!  She has a look at my boobs then we both sit down and have a chat.  The plastics nurse is there too although she doesn’t say much.  The consultant starts to reiterate what the nurse said 2 days previously about losing my nipple on the healthy side. 

Well.  I’ve been mulling this over a lot.  It seems NUTS that I should lose my healthy nipple.  Why?  I mean, I understand the theory but surely the surgeries can be done in steps?  First, the reduction, keeping the nipple attached.  Second the mastectomy, which in theory should be OK because both boobs would then be the same size and the nipples would be in the same place.  The reduction would have been already done so they’d ‘just’ do the reduction and the reconstruction.  Both nipples intact.

The consultant looks at me and then at the nurse.  She says, ‘Have you been doing some reading?’  No, I haven’t.  I tell her it just seems to be daft to lose the nipple on the healthy boob and that I’d been thinking about why and how to avoid it. 

She moves on to explain why this MAY not work.  When a reduction is done, they cut around the nipple so the blood supply is coming from the tissue below.  When they do a mastectomy, the blood supply from the tissue below is cut off so the supply has to come from the skin around it.  If during the reduction the bloody supply from the skin doesn’t reconnect, then the nipple would die.  BUT.  I could then have a nipple recreated.  And there is a chance it could work. 

She slaps the table and says, ‘Do you know, you may just have rewritten the book on this?’  It hasn’t been done before.  Whoooo. 

Upshot.  She’s gonna do a reduction in June.  She’s also going to do liposuction from my stomach, lipo fill my cancer scar in an attempt to unteather it (it is puckered and pulled in, seemingly attached to the tissue underneath).  Then 3 months or so after she’ll do a mastectomy and reconstruction.  She hasn’t decided what type of recon to do yet. 

I’m happy with this.  A consultant that listens to the patient.  Novel concept.