I can deal with anything I will have to deal in this ridiculous adventure. I feel confident about that. However, I feel like I reserve the right to be bothered by things that are trivial in the grand scheme of things.

One of those things is that I won’t be able to get reconstructive surgery until after chemo and radiation. The surgeon estimated that to be a year from now. For some reason, that REALLY bothers me.

We faxed all of my medical records to MD Anderson this morning. I am waiting for them to go through them to make sure everything is there. Once that is done, they will schedule my appointment. They are looking at the third week of October in scheduling right now. That means that I would need to reschedule my surgery up here in order to get a second opinion down there.

One of the positives about going down there is that the surgeon, plastic surgeon, oncologist, etc. all work together as a team to develop and implement your treatment plan. Not so up here. It is very disjointed.

For instance, the surgeon yesterday told me that I would likely need radiation due to where the tumor was located; therefore, I cannot get reconstruction at the time of the mastectomy. However, she has never spoken to my oncologist (neither have I for the record – that appointment is tomorrow). Based on her assumption, she doesn’t intend to engage a plastic surgeon until next year when the chemo/radiation is done.

I just feel like she/we should at least ASK if it is possible that I won’t have radiation before we make that decision.

Going to MD Anderson will likely tell me the same thing. I mean, she has good logic behind why I would need radiation – it is likely sitting on my chest muscle because the tumor is very high up on my chest. They won’t take out the muscle so they need to do radiation to make sure they get it all. I get that. I would just feel better if she, the oncologist and the plastic surgeon had discussed and agreed that this is best.

But I also don’t want to wait until November to start what will dominate a year or more of my life. Let’s get this thing started!

So, I am postponing my “MD Anderson-or-bust” decision until they call me back with an appointment day. It isn’t like I can do anything now anyway.

Big decisions, folks. Big decisions.