having a choice, finding a surgeon

When it came right down to it, I realized that I had a choice about who my surgeon would be. Salvay gave me three names. At first I went for the woman, whom he described as a "non-nonsense Lesbian." But after dealing with her office, and feeling somewhat abused by her process, I said no to Dr. O. There is something I don't like about feeling like a Chevy on an assembly line. Instead, I made an appointment with Dr. Dwight Ming-Teh Chen. I did some research and liked what I found. My dear friend Anita drove me over to his office in Los Gatos. We had not seen each other in a long time so we had a lot of catch-up chat on the ride. I was relaxed by the time we got there. The women in the office were very nice, offering kindness in the form of coffee and other things. After the Chevy Plant approach, it was nice to wind up at such a cozy office.

Dr. Chen: smart, confident and kind. It was such a great combination as he described the procedure, the pre-op and the post op processes.

He explained my situation. After the local lab looked at the tissue captured by Dr. Salvay during the D+C, he sent it to Stanford where it was examined by someone he described as a "world famous" pathologist. I am guessing that he got it right. Stage One, Grade One Cervical Cancer. I believe he called it "hardly developed" and "well contained." Like Dr. Salvay, he said the hysterectomy should be the end of it. But Dr. Chen is, perhaps, a better "promise keeper" than Salvay and declared that he would let me know about that after he saw what was in there.

They gave me some papers. I signed them. The surgery was originally scheduled for April 16, but they moved it up to April 15.

On Surgery Day, I show up two hours before the surgery. They do all the wiring stuff and get me ready, and then it is show time. The process is laparoscopic, using the rockstar machine of the moment known as DaVinci. A good omen for an artist. I spend the night at the hospital and barring complications, they send me home the next day.

One of the great lessons I have been learning is that I am a consumer of medical services. I get to choose. I get to feel safe and confident about this.