I really like my surgeon. He is a fact-based, down-to-earth, extremely driven man who takes his time to explain every detail to us, even when he goes way over our heads. This is a man who reads, studies, and soaks in everything he can about breast cancer. He is a breast surgeon, not a general surgeon. There’s a BIG difference. He has operated on thousands and thousands of breasts. During our second meeting with him, he got a text message about a new study published that day and was excited to go home and read it. This is my guy.

The day after my surgery, he visited me in my hospital room at 7am. He sat on my bed and talked to us for half an hour before his regular day even started. He was hoping to get me in a trial for people with micrometastases but the deadline was before my pathology report would be back. He offered no reassurances about my cancer, and I don’t feel like he should. No one should tell you everything is fine when they don’t know that it is. Hunches don’t work here, numbers do. My surgeon has never said everything will be fine. He has said, “For all we know, you could be cancer-free right now. But we don’t know. There could be some cancer cells floating around in your body, or there might not be. They’re too microscopic to see on any scans or tests.” Regarding treatment, he deferred to my oncologist. He told us that he has opinions, but will always defer to the oncologist because they are the treatment expert.

Not all surgeons are the same. I was incredibly unimpressed with my mom’s surgeon. He was an oncology surgeon, yes, but he seemed fairly clueless about breast cancer. On the day of her surgery, he sauntered in and questioned what the oncologist wanted done in preparation for chemo, because he said my mother didn’t need chemo. As if the surgeon’s opinion was more important than the oncologist’s. When you go in for surgery, it’s all pre-planned, all written up, orders made. There should be no question about what’s happening. After we pressed him, he called her oncologist – an hour before surgery – because he thought he knew best. The oncologist told him to stick to the plan.

I don’t get it. Don’t you usually check into this shit before you cut someone open? I mean, really? Don’t you check into the patient’s history? Mom needed a port for chemo and the surgeon’s opinion – which he repeated more than a few times – was that she didn’t need chemo so she didn’t need the port. This made my mother and father very anxious. The fact is, Mom is HER2+. It is an incredibly aggressive cancer, and the protocol for the size of her tumor is to administer chemo. Fact. You don’t need to be an oncologist to know this; you can simply google it.

And after my mother’s lumpectomy, the surgeon waltzed back into her room and declared her “cancer-free.” Once again, if you know anything about HER2, you know that HER2 likes to travel, and there is a significantly greater chance of recurrence without chemo. How he can be an oncology surgeon and be this clueless about the nature of breast cancer? Two thumbs down, Mr. Surgeon.

Fortunately, Mom has a fantastic oncologist: smart, detail-oriented, and a cancer-survivor himself. She is in good hands.