Need to vent about the situation my Wife Melanie is waiting for reconstruction
First a little background info, we’ve been married since 2002 and shortly after we decided to try for kids, after about a year of no results we went through harrowing fertility treatment, after months or getting our hopes up and then having them dashed we took the decision to try and enjoy our life without kids and carry on.
then about half a year later my wife found a DCIS lump.
She was diagnosed last christmas eve and after a lot of delay due to constulant sickness and cautious surgery she had the lump taken out with clear margin about a few weeks ago, now the breast cancer surgeon told us that she would be disfigured due to the size of her bust and the size of the lump so he recommended a mastectomy.
We sat down and weighed up the pros and cons and decided the mastectomy and immediate reconstruction was the way to go.
the plan was to do this early this year but that changed to just taking the lump out and then do the mastectomy and reconstruction.
now that the lumps out we’ve had a plastic surgeon consultant tell us that the companies he uses for the tissue expanders don’t do standard implants and expanders for the narrow chest of my wife and have to custom make them, this was found out three weeks ago! I assumed that the ball would be rolling for custom made expanders but the surgeon hasn’t even found a company yet.
I got home after the consulancy and found a company in the UK straight away.
Now we are having to cancel a holday we booked to get over not having kids (booked before the cancer was found and no holiday insurance)
I feel like they simply did not want to do the bigger operation at the time it needed to be done and now we are paying in stress and heartache waiting for the reconstruction and mastectomy.
I’m now wondering if we should get a second opinion, We are at Sunderland hospital and from looking at hospital stats they haven’t been doing the reconstruction side for long.
Sorry for the long winded mail but to be told that we are no further forward three weeks on is a real downer