Hi there :) I'm very new to posting on this forum so I'm sorry if this is the wrong place/this isn't appropriate to post! I'm posting on behalf of my fiancee - out of the two of us I'm better at admin/finding info about this stuff.
My SO has the BRCA2 gene, she's known this for a number of years, and all the women in her family have had breast cancer in their early 30s. She's in her mid-twenties and has a history of smoking/drinking so she's anxious to get a preventative mastectomy in the near future. She doesn't want a reconstruction, she's thought about this a lot too and thinks for her personally she'd prefer to have no breasts than to have new different breasts - plus we're a lesbian couple so her relationship to gender is a little different/when we have children I will be able to breastfeed etc.
She's been through the NHS genetic counselling system and been referred to a breast clinic, but had a pretty bad experience there initially - the consultant she was referred to was pretty misogynistic, was trying to persuade her very strongly to delay the mastectomy until her 40s, to get a reconstruction, saying that it'll be harder for her to date men in future, even asking her bra size while examining her (!) and refusing to sign off on her being on the waiting list when she said she was still definitely not wanting a reconstruction. This all wasted almost half a year. So she asked to change consultant, and now has a lovely female doctor but the waiting list is 2+ years, her op is far more likely to be cancelled/changed as is totally fair given she doesn't have cancer. We won't be in the same city in a little over a year and are looking to move abroad, so this is quite a stressful situation.
We are now exploring private options to get this to happen within the next year, for her peace of mind and so she can move city/country without worrying. We've found it's quite difficult to work out the pricing for a lot of these options - the initial appointment fee is around £200 itself and we've been told we won't find out the actual price until that appointment has happened. Our budget is £10,000 which is still really a lot of money for us! Sorry to be long winded - my question is does anyone have any experience with what pricing would typically be like for this procedure at a private hospital?
Thanks so so much,
Ellie :)
