a very important person

(originally written 11/13, but forgot to hit post)

Because I'm a sarcoma patient at MD Anderson, the  plastic reconstruction surgeon who will put me back together, and in one sense determine my future quality of life (assuming that I beat the risk of recuurence or metastisis, either because the cancer surgeon and pathologist are brilliant, or because the radiation therapy killed all of the cancer cells, or both) is listed as a consulting physician.  The hospital originally scheduled me to see him on the day before surgery, to save me an extra trip to Houston.  This may have happened because I was annoyed with being told to fly to Houston on short notice for a day to see their radiation oncologist, only to be told she couldn't say anything to me, or do any treatment plan unless I committed to doing the 5 week course of radiation in Houston.

Regardless, I thought it would be good -- and to me it seemed important -- to see this VERY IMPORTANT PERSON for my future life enough in advance of the surgery that he would have time to consider what he's going to do.  So, I'm now going to see him the week prior.  I'll fly down for the day, so all it will cost is airfare (I love SW -- <$200) and a taxi.  Since all he's seen to date are my files, which show only my arm, this will allow him to see my whole body.  While it is possible that, even taking a safe margin, enough of my muscle will remain that they don't need to supplement it to allow me to live a life that includes cooking/chopping, as well as grabbing bike frame handles and ski poles, all this doc may need to do is a skin graft.  But, it is also possible that he needs to do something much more complicated -- splitting the muscle on the bottom of my forearm to run some of it to the top (necessitating Occupational Therapy in addition to physical therapy), harvesting muscle/fat/skin from somewhere else in my body, like my lat, because there isn't enough muscle left on my arm, or harvesting muscle/fat/skin/tendon from somewhere lese on my body, like maybe my gracilis (a muscle on my inner thigh)).  Or something else. These are big complicated surgeries and I'd like the surgeon responsible to engage in some forethought.

I guess I'll talk about some of the other logistics tomorrow.