After my experience at the plastic surgeons, the last thing I wanted to do was see another doctor, but I didn't have a choice. Mark and I dropped the girls off at Diane's, and then it was back to Memorial hospital. This time we went to a different section of the hospital called The Cancer Center. The Cancer Center was a newer building attached to the left-hand side of the
older main hospital building, it had it's own entrance and parking…valet parking. Did I mention how cheap I am? I will go to greatlengths to avoid valet parking. I have walked blocks out of my way at restaurants and banquet halls to avoid those guys. It’s the waiting for my car that annoys me almost as much as the cost of the parking and tip. Maybe if I drove an expensive car I wouldbe treated better, but my experience have all been negative. When Mark and I were looking for a place to have our wedding, any banquet hall that had valet parking was crossed off our list.
The parking lot that was closest to the main entrance was $2 an hour for everyone except the patients. We were suppose to park free if we got our parking stub validated. Actually, the price varied, depending on who was working the check-out booth. Some days I paid nothing, some days $1an hour and other days $2 an hour, hmmmmmm. The not knowing was madding, but making the extortion payment to the toll both guy was still cheaper than the valet parking, which was two dollars an hour plus tip. Needles to say we parked in the lot by the main entrance and walked to the Cancer Center.
The main parking lot was on the other side of the main building. When we parked there we had to walk to a sidewalk that paralleled the front part of the circular drive that was in front of the main entrance to the hospital. At the end of the sidewalk we turned right and walked down a steep slope then turned right again until we reach the entrance of The Cancer Center.
We walked pasted the valet parking guys and enter the building. Then, we had to go up one floor to get to the second level on The Cancer Center-which was the same level as the first level of the main entrance-I'm so confused.
We found the waiting room easily. Now this…was a waiting room! The room was large and could hold over thirty people. It had a color scheme of green, beige, yellow and black. These were not weenie colors, they were bold (+). There were many chairs most of which lined the walls and there were many well placed end tables (+). There was a group of about six or seven
chairs extending into the middle of the room back to back which broke up the room. It didn't feel like I was sitting with a big crowd, it felt almost intimate (+). The chairs alternate between solid color chairs and chairs with a leaf design. The waiting room served seven doctors, a few technicians and the chemotherapy area. There were two receptionists windows and one was almost always manned, that meant that I didn't have to wait forever to find an employee (+). There wasa closet with plenty of space and plenty of hangers for coats (+), and there was a lot of reading material, a very pretty fish tank (+) and NO TV (++) I gave the room an A+.
I checked-in and filled out a zillion forms then sat down and prepared for a long wait. A few minutes later my name was called along with four other people. We past through a door into a bigger room. There was a counter with chairs on the left (for billing
problems I think) and a small office on the right. We followed a woman a blond woman who had an Eastern European accent. The pathway seemed to lead forward, I though that we would go that way, but she made right turn so we did also. After a few steps we were at the lab area and I realized that we were called there to have blood drawn. There were two technicians
who took a vile of blood from each of us. When we were done we were sent back to the waiting room. A few minutes later the door opened again and a different woman called my name. Mark and I went to the door and the woman introduced herself as
Dr. O'Mally. She looked younger than me. Yes, I've reached the age when my doctors are younger than I am. This woman looked somewhere in her late thirties, she stood around 5'2" or 3" and her blond hair looked natural. She was pretty in an Irish, make-up free kind-of way. She wore a classic skirt and blouse and flat practical shoes. She told us to follow her then turned andheaded down the hall. Mark and I struggle to keep up with her.
Dr. O'Mally's office was at the end of the hall. We got there in record time. The décor of the hall and doctor's office was a variation on the waiting room theme. The carpet was green and the walls are a beige type color. Dr. O'Mally office was small and windowless, there was a big desk with a computer on it and two chairs for visitors. The chairs had the same leaf design as the chairs in the waiting room. I noticed as we walked (ran) down the hall that in some of the doctor's offices the chairs had the leaf design, while others had a black and green strip pattern. Do the boy doctors get the stripes and the girl doctors get the leaves? Hmmmmm.
Behind Dr. O'Mally's desk was a floor to ceiling bookshelf. In almost every other doctor's office I visited, I noticed some personal touches on the book shelf pictures of their family, trophies, art work, some indication of the doctor's personal life, here nothing. Well, almost nothing. Way up on the top shelf there was a beautiful picture frame, but it is empty. Weird.
As we sat down I was starting to think that I would get two doctors in a row with no personality. Wrong. This woman was bursting with personality. She was smart, funny and had a great bed side manor. She just had a lousy decorator. Unlike the two male doctors that I had seen recently where I was shy and let Mark do most of the talking, I felt very comfortable
with Dr. O'Mally, so we talk easily. She told me that she was surprise to see me, because she normally does not see a patient until after their surgery. But Dr. Sullivan knew that I wanted second opinion about the mastectomy. I know…I know to get a second
opinion a person should never go to a friend of the first doctor. My father also wanted me to see a second surgeon, because he believed (and he had the research to back him up) that too many women are not give the lumpectomy option. A small part of the reason I didn't want to see a second surgeon was time. It took me a long time and a lot of effort to find Dr. Sullivan. Another factor was the money, remember I'm cheap. Besides all that, I felt that Dr. Sullivan made his point for mastectomy vs. lumpectomy. It made sense that if the tumor was on the top part of the breast, i.e. 10:00 o'clock to say 2:00 o'clock that a lumpectomy will work.
But my tumors were on the bottom of the breast, at the 6:00 o'clock and 8 o'clock position. How does a surgeon cut out only thelower half of a breast and keep the natural shape of the breast? I felt that he might as well remove as much breast tissue as possible. After we talked for awhile Dr. O'Mally brought me into the exam room. After our experience in the plastic surgeons exam, Mark wisely chose to stay in her office.