Breast Reconstruction Video Charlotte
My name is Shirley, I’m forty…yeah I’m forty eight this year, kind of flew by. I have two children, I’m married, my children are grown. I was diagnosed in August of ’05 with breast cancer. They diagnosed it as DCIS and did a biopsy which led to a lumpectomy which led to a mastectomy and which brought me here to Dr. Ditesheim for reconstruction. And with the procedure I had chose with Dr. Ditesheim, it was very advantageous to do it in a one step procedure, that way one anesthesia eliminated that extra step.
Everything about Dr. Ditesheim and working with him has always exceeded my expectations. He’s always been very thorough, very conscientious of his decision making. You can always tell he thinks through every process before he gets involved into it. Always looks at my best interest. Even when it came time to do the latissimus flap, one of the staff members here in his office had said, “You know a lot of women are very concerned about different side effects and everything, of losing strength in that.” And those questions never occurred to me because I knew Dr. Ditesheim would never do anything that debilitating to me, to recommend a procedure that would debilitate my life, that I’m so active and I just need to keep going and I basically don’t have time for any of this so let’s just do it and get going. So I knew that that wasn’t going to be an issue.
Jan, Jan’s the best. She coordinates the surgery schedules, always accommodating my schedule, what works for me, along with what can be worked into Dr. Ditesheim’s schedule. She has taken care of all the insurance situations. Basically I’ve had no issues with my insurance company. I had found out through this procedure that Dr. Ditesheim is only one in a handful of plastic surgeons who are willing to do reconstruction after breast cancer because of the insurance issues. And the fact that he has done that and he is so knowledgeable and so compassionate and so understanding and so willing to take anything that it takes to make sure that the results are what I want as well as what he would want is amazing.
When I first started my whole experience here at Dr. Ditesheim’s office Deborah was not a member of the staff, she came on board in the past year. And what an awesome addition to the staff. She just fits in well and she’s very friendly and very understanding and you know came up to speed very quickly and was just a wonderful, gave of herself and gave of her information and helped me, you know any questions at all she had the information for me or got me what I needed to know.
I’m feeling absolutely great. You know we finally finished off this last surgery and I’m to a point where it’s like, yes it’s done. That was the last step to take to put cancer behind me. And it’s just been a really good experience.
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