Come Wednesday 21 December, loving people were badgering me (reasonably, but not quite as helpful as they might have assumed) to say what I was going to be doing for Christmas, so they might feel a bit more confident I would be okay. I kept saying, could I wait until after seeing the fabled plastic surgeon who would do my breast reconstruction op. He would (as everyone on the medics side kept saying) surely give me a date for my op and then I would know how long I would have to spend on having fun at Christmas. Okay, said everyone. One person, helpfully, went on and on about how difficult it must be for me being on my own, with no one there with me to help me through this. It is quite exhausting trying to make people understand that I never set out to be on my own although, yes, it is rather a disappointment neither to have a partner nor children but that ain't gonna change in a hurry right now and, actually, I have a tremendous support network of people that really love and care about me as I love and care about them and I am, technically, nowhere near 'on my own'. Urgh.
Off I go to see the oncologist but at some point the day before I had eaten something pretty iffy at a fast food outlet, so I had spent the morning groaning with gut pain and ended up driving to the appointment in Edinburgh very slowly, largely one handed whilst clutching my tummy with the other hand, and deciding that if it were anything vaguely serious, at least I would be at a hospital to get it looked at if it carried on. Almost as soon as I hit the bloody awful queue for the Edinburgh hospital's car park and then started running to the breast unit the offending area shifted along the alimentary canal and the pain went. Always silver linings in this game; always.
At the breast unit, I was a bit late, so I was a bit worried I had missed my slot to see the plastic surgeon and have my four hour pre-surgical assessment, as my appointment letter had instructed me. Except the letter had not closed the required booklet and I had no instructions about what to really expect, except it was a four hour appointment.
The plastic surgeon graciously agreed to see me despite me and then him being an hour late.
And then the whole thing nosedived. Rapidly.
Oh no, this was not a pre surgery appointment. No no, this was just a surgical options chat (like the one I had nearly an entire month before with my original consultant surgeon).
The surgeon described the type of surgery he would do for a DIEP, and the fact that muscle and a bit of gristle off the end of one rib would be hacked off as well as spare tyre blubber, which had not been previously advertised. This was to get hold of the right kinds of blood vessels to connect up in my new tit. He wasn't sure about the muscle removal bit but that the muscles of the abdomen would be split, maybe, rather like child-bearing mothers, but they would knit back together again in no time, er...
Anyway, moving on, after a quick look and a prod, the surgeon approved of my spare tyre as being highly appropriate for the operation and we sat back down to continue discusisons.
He demanded to know why my original consultant surgeon had not put anything about nodes in his letter. This was all my fault, apparently. There was nothing about nodes. So I said that I had been told by the specialist nurse that the node already biopsied would be taken out during the mastectomy but I was not aware of any others. Oh, said the surgeon, he could arrange for them all to be taken out if a full biopsy of them to decide if that was needed or not had been done already. Why had this not happened already, he asked, as if I should know what was in the original referral letter and, additionally, was the person who should have known to have demanded a full nodes biopsies? I had no idea, I said. Well, in any event, he said, he was going on holiday.
Oh. So I've waited weeks to see a plastic surgeon who won't even be doing my surgery. Great. He must have known this for weeks, and not bothered to pass my case on to anyone else. He must also have known about the nodes thing for weeks, and not said anything to anyone. He pointed to a scrawl on the letter saying: urgent. Or at least that's what he interpreted it saying. What bollocks.
Okay, when was he going on holiday, I asked. Mid January to early February. I could wait to have my surgery done by him when after he got back on 05 February and I would 'be fine waiting on Tamoxifen'. Sometimes, women would be intentionally put on Tamoxifen for weeks before their operations, he said (as if it was a mild mistake I was still waiting for surgery). I pointed out the oncologist I had seen on Friday had said The Lump was 'only Stage 2' with no spread and I would not have even radiotherapy, so I suppose it might be okay to wait. But I wasn't convinced it was safe. I was extremely worried about matasticising.
Was there anyone else who could do the surgery instead, if he was too busy, I asked? Yes, there was an entire department full of surgeons who could do my surgery all located within the very same breast unit and, the plastic surgeon reassured me, he would be happy for any one of them to operate on his family members tomorrow. No, that is not reassuring on so many levels, actually. I'm old enough to remember the ghastly spectre of John Selwyn Gummer, the then Agriculture Minister, feeding his daughter, Cordelia, a burger in front of the media to say British beef was safe in the face of mad cow disease, which it wasn't.
He said the surgery still had to happen at the third hospital, not in this one or the Borders hospital, because it required microscopes. But the good news was that if he was on holiday, then the operating theatre would be empty and available to other surgeons to use instead of him, if they wanted.
Slightly stunned by all of this, and fighting not to burst into a massive flood of tears as opposed to the occasional trickle, I clarified for my own sake that he, the plastic surgeon, was going to talk to my oncologist to get clarity on nodes by writing to my original consultant surgeon (I pointed out where the consultant's secretary's email address was to help him) and he would also check with his 'very nice waiting list man' to see whom else could be squeezed in to do my surgery before 05 February.
I had made no progress towards being put on a surgical list in a month. Nor did I have any idea whom to trust any more.
I set off home and then realised I needed to inter the cat's ashes, so headed off to bury the remants of the cat on top of my mother's grave and have a hearty howl at the bloody awfulness of absolutely everything, albeit in very beautiful surroundings. Then go home and write a stinking email to my original consultant surgeon and my specialist nurse to ask WTAF.
