Shopping for a breast surgeon is not exactly like shopping for a swimsuit. The one commonality I see is, you want it to be a good fit. Beyond that, it’s an instinct thing. And I didn’t feel like I had time to run around trying out bunches for size, I wanted to find one as soon as possible.
The same names surfaced when I started asking around about breast surgeons – Colette, Shawna, Christine and Eleni. Four female masters of their craft in the DC area. Each name came with a similar endorsement, “You can’t go wrong with ________.”
DC women, thank god, do their homework – they research credentials, talk to others about their experiences, and get second, third and fourth opinions. Grateful for the extensive research done by others, I did virtually none myself (except for talking with Kelly), and simply proceeded with getting appointments scheduled.
Eleni’s name came up twice on the same day, from two different friends, one of whom is an oncologist. I looked her up online – and got a familiar feeling when I saw her face. Wait, I know her. I’ve met her before. Can it be? My mind flashed back to a winter snowstorm in Albany in 1995, when I had driven to my friend Sam’s party from Boston where I was attending law school. He was in medical school at Albany Medical College at the time. I remember meeting Eleni, and her commenting on my shoes – “lawyers always have nice shoes” – and my saying her name “E-len-EE” and Sam correcting me, “it’s an I,” to which I replied tartly, “yes but I was speaking phonetically.” I quickly looked at her credentials…yep, Albany Medical College. Same person. How odd that she would appear in my life again, so many years later, and under these circumstances. She is the head of breast surgery at Georgetown University Hospital.
In the end, I made appointments with Christine, Shawna and Colette – in that order. Colette had been recommended by my internist, Shawna and Christine by friends who had had breast cancer. It just so happened that that was the order dictated by their schedules, but I was glad that Colette was last as I was thinking I might cancel her if either of the first two was a go. A friend who had had a bilateral mastectomy told me *not* to see Colette, saying that Colette had done her first lumpectomy, and argued with her after the pathology report came back stating unequivocally, “margins not clean.” “It was like she couldn’t admit she made a mistake.”
Christine was a force. She breezed in with her twinkling blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. I liked the crinkles around her eyes when she smiled, her directness, confidence and candor. She explained the type of cancer I had and gave me a booklet of papers. I told her I was leaning toward a mastectomy. She said, “It certainly makes it easier.” We talked about reconstruction options.
She said, “They can definitely take tissue from your belly.” She eyed me up and down. “Do you even have any belly fat?”
I said, “Of course!” and lifted my shirt to show her.
She leaned over, grabbed my stomach, and squished my belly fat into a ball with both hands as though she were kneading dough. She said apologetically, “I’m sorry to do this, but it’s what the plastic surgeon would do. OK, you probably have enough. You’re not very big up there.”
We laughed. I asked her about eating, since my tumor is estrogen-positive. She said, “Everything in moderation! That’s what we tell people. And the tamoxifen will be doing a lot of the work for you, by blocking your estrogen receptors.”
She said she planned to be on vacation the first two weeks of August, but that I could proceed with meeting the plastic surgeon she works with. I let her know that I would be consulting with another surgeon for a second opinion and it might come down scheduling. “Dr. Willey’s great! You’ll be in good hands either way.”
Shawna was next. She worked at Inova Fairfax, but had been the head breast surgeon at Georgetown for years before that. I heard that she left because she and Eleni, now the current head, did not get along. When I asked our oncologist friend, he laughed and shrugged and said, “Surgeons all have egos.”
Inova was beautiful, clean and well-run. I loved how the new patient coordinator called me – and left not one, but two messages – when I was first trying to schedule an appointment, rather than making me chase her down. Shawna’s assistant Minna talked with us for close to half an hour at the beginning of the appointment. She said she had worked with Shawna for 26 years. She seemed extremely knowledgeable and asked
Shawna came in next and introduced herself. Like Christine, she was confident, lively and humorous. She made me feel like I would be in good hands, literally and figuratively. She spent ample time with us, answering all of my questions patiently. I have 2, maybe 3, friends who have used Shawna for their breast surgeries. People love her and I could see why. She said, “As far as breast cancer goes, yours is a good one to have. It’s not aggressive. It looks to be stage 1. You’re going to be fine.”
Which is what I have believed all along, but it was a relief to hear the expert say it. We talked about the third biopsy; did I have to have it if I was going to have a mastectomy? “No, you don’t, I’d be comfortable waiving that.”
Shawna said if she had to guess, she thought I would not need radiation. The need for chemo would be determined by something called Onco-typing, something Christine had also mentioned.
At the end of our meeting, I said I was leaning toward going with her and Inova. The surgery would be Inova if I went with her: “It’s the only place I have privileges any more.” We discussed plastic surgeons. Minna mentioned a McLean group of surgeons that Shawna works with routinely – “they take your insurance. All of those doctors are great.”
Before I left Inova, the patient care coordinator had already gotten me an appointment with a plastic surgery practice for the day after the holiday weekend.
I left feeling like things were falling into place.