After months of frustration and disappointment, I met with Dr. Roger Khouri an internationally respected plastic surgeon, at UCSF. Dr. Khouri, who is from the Miami area, was there to share his ideas & technique with the Oncology, Plastic and Reconstruction Surgical specialities. As he was evaluating my situation, he looked up at me, smiled, and said "there's more than one way to skin a cat". SO! he's taking me on. My surgery is scheduled for 8/14 (my BD present to myself) at his clinic in Miami and I will be there for a week. He noticed the scar on my left leg (remember the golf cart accident?) and said "I can fix that too" which thrilled me. He is using a technique for the reconstruction called Brava, if you're interested... http://www.mybrava.com. An added bonus is that extensive fat transfer is involved so he will be harvesting fat from all over my body--think, a full body liposuction. If he decides to work on my leg at the same time it will be a week in a wheelchair with my leg up and he said more painful than the reconstruction procedure. At this point, what's a little more pain? Good drugs, a glass of Pinot; sign me up!
My cancer treatment continues without adverse side effects. My surgical Oncologist at UCSF informed me on Monday that this is a good time to be Her-2/neu + since there are a number of new drugs that are nearing final approval from the FDA for use in breast cancer patients and they will be available to me in the near future.
Now, about my friend above. There are some really, really big snakes on the back 9 at NVCC--harmless, but big and scary. So, watch where you walk! We saw this pretty guy on the path coming down 18 from the men's tee box.
We leave two weeks from today for our 4 week Baltic cruise on Regent. We embark in Southampton, UK and visit Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Russia and Finland. Our post trip includes more Russia & Poland for a total of 6 weeks. Tom has put so many hours into this trip to make it perfect. We are both getting very excited but there's a lot to do before we leave.
