Laurie wondered if there were other options than a mastectomy.
Transcript
And then I thought well okay there must be something better and I looked in the (name university) library online and found the most recent textbook on breast surgery. At the very end of the chapter on mastectomy there was a short section on this new thing called the Goldiloks mastectomy, which was exactly what I was looking for. So basically, you take out the breast tissue and then you form sort of a small mound here, very much like a breast reduction but there’s no breast tissue up there. It’s just a skin flap that’s been shoved in there to make a small mound, and you have a scar that’s like this underneath. So it feels almost like you just have a little pressure there from a bra line or something.
And I thought that looks cool. So and then how was I going to find a surgeon to do this? How was I going to get my surgeon to do this? So I contacted the surgeon who had invented the procedure and asked her some questions and she said “You can have your surgeon phone me any time.” So I got her phone number, I printed out the paper about the procedure and I made a PowerPoint presentation about why I wanted to have a mastectomy, and why this was a good procedure. And I tried this presentation out on my family and then my GP (general practitioner) and my GP’s going like Laurie no one’s ever made me a PowerPoint presentation before but this Goldiloks thing looks pretty interesting. Why don’t you ask the surgeon if he’ll do that? So go show him your PowerPoint.
So I made an appointment and I went to the surgeon. I sat there with my laptop and we looked at my PowerPoint and I said “Let’s do this.” And he was well, he is really busy, right! And he’s busy, busy, busy and then he has this crazy patient come in saying do something completely different. And he said “Well no you’re going to need a plastic surgeon to do that.” And I said “No, it says in this paper that a general surgeon can do this procedure and you’re a good general surgeon, so I’m sure you can do it.” So he said “Okay I’ll take the paper and I’ll read it and I’ll talk to my colleagues at the hospital, the plastic surgeons for advice.” Then, he decided yes he would do it and he actually did contact the doctor who had invented the procedure. When it came for the day of the surgery, he basically came in with what I think was an e-mail from her with the directions about how to draw the lines. Because, before you go for the surgery, they have to draw where they’re going to make the incisions. So he was sort of reading and measuring with his ruler and his protractor, and so, all the lines got drawn and then he did the surgery. He had to actually learn one new technique in order to be able to do it but he did that.
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