Caren frustrated

[Guest guest]

Hi ladies,

went to meet with the civilian surgeon yesterday and I am so

mmmaaaaadddd right now. After confirming with the military hospital

that all needed paperwork would be faxed to the surgeons office,

what do we find when we arrive????? A folder containig NOTHING but 3

pages of labwork. No path report, no written radiology report from

the mammos and certainly not the letter promised by the army surgeon

to be given to the civilian surgeon. Can you imagine HOW we

felt!!!!! I am so angry right now, all this after we made clear how

vital communication is between army and civilian. Hello, this is

cancer we are talking about, not a broken leg!!!!!

So here we are meeting with a great surgeon who is totally

unprepared, but luckily we had our copy of the path and mammo

report. He had to be clued in on my medical history and family

history and right now we are still a bit uncertain as how to proceed.

Since I am now officially 4th generation he feels I would greatly

benefit from genetic testing and should I test positive he would

most certainly recommend a double mastectomy. This is however

somewhat timeconsuming and getting approval from tricare

(militaryHMO) could prove difficult. For right now we agreed that

taking out the tumor and doing a sentinal node bio should suffice to

point us into the right direction for treatment. So now I am scared

of having general anesthesia, since no one has my complete medical

history and I have always been afraid of not walking up from

it.....It is frustrating for me to not have a team communicating

among one another and to not have a PCM really stinks. I am assigned

to some doc in Fort Riley, but we have never met and getting an

appointment to see him takes weeks....FRUSTRATION!!!!!!

This is starting to wear us down, just when we think things are

moving in the right direction, bamm ,just what we were afraid of to

begin with happens...NO COMMUNICATION...I feel like a wandering

trophy right now and my car is on auto pilot between Fort Riley and

Manhattan....

Thank you for listening and if you have any ideas or suggestions,

please help....We have been so consumed with assuring that all

records go to the right people, all authorizations are there that we

barely had time or the memeory to ask the most important questions

in all of this: How bad is it, what can we do, when do we start,

what kind of op and what treatment.....Right now I feel so mad

because i get the feeling that I am only getting bits and pieces and

not the whole picture cause my focus is not where it should be....

Ladies, I hope all of your day has and will go better than ours. I

need some uplifting and maybe a kick in the behind...Thank you for

being there, thank you for letting me vent.

Hugs to all!!

Caren in Kansas

IDC (no clue yet as to what stage)