I am feeling really good about my decision to change oncologist. My first oncologist Dr. Gloom really caused me a lot of stress. Don’t get me wrong I think even if I had not had him as my doctor the cancer diagnosis alone would have caused me stress. He just made it worse with his comment about not being able to cure it when it came back. It really felt to me like he was basically saying I was going to die and I was 35 with 3 small children and death was not in my plans.
I did a lot of research on choosing my new oncologist and the facility that they would be associated with. I did not choose my first oncologist my surgeon recommended him as did my primary care doctor. I am not so sure if my primary doctor would recommend him again, I made sure I told him what he said the first appointment. He had to know who was causing me to need sleeping pills, valium and was making me still cry almost daily. I hope he took it into consideration when referring new patients to a doctor.
My new oncologist was already great to me, we have only had one appointment so far and it went great. She reassured me that my deciding to have the prophylactic bilateral mastectomies and reconstruction was the right choice. She said that had she been my doctor from the start she would have recommended it. She also calmed some of my concerns with of developing a recurrence. She said that she felt good about my prognosis because I did wait a year post treatments to do the mastectomies and when they went through pathology they were all cancer free. She also did something that no other doctor had done; she hugged me and told me it would be ok. She also referred me to a new plastic surgeon to help me see why I was turning pink and hopefully try to fix the appearance of the “girls”.