My journey to my surgery date

In July, I finally met with the plastic surgeon. I had originally had an appointment in March that had to be rescheduled twice because of conflicts. Talk about a weird/nervous feeling going to the plastic surgeon. I'm not a flash your boobs kind of person, but when you are going for that reason, you just have to let it all hang out. Of course, I guess you shouldn't really feel that embarrassed because they see boobs all the time.

Anyways, met with the most wonderful doctor you could ever, ever, ever meet. She spent almost an hour talking with me about all of the options I had for reconstruction. We narrowed it down to 2 options that would both require 3 surgeries:
Option 1: Do a reduction because my chest was big to begin with to save the nipples, wait 3 months or so then have the mastectomy with expanders put in place, wait 6 months and then have the expanders switched out for implants
Option 2: Have the mastectomy with expanders put in place, wait 6 months and have the expanders switched out for implants, wait 3 months have have the nipple reconstruction done.

Now the only problem with Option 1 was that I was worried that having any part left over that could possibly be connected to any breast tissue would keep my risk of getting breast cancer up. So, I told her I wanted to talk to my breast specialist and get his opinion before I made a permanent decision.

I met with the breast specialist again and talked with him about my meeting with the plastic surgeon. He gave me his most expert opinion that Option 1 would be ideal for me because my breast MRI had been great and I was still cancer free.

So, I called the plastic surgeon and gave them go ahead to appeal to my insurance for Option 1 and to get my surgery set up. This was in August. I was hoping to get surgery scheduled for the first of October so I wouldn't have to take many days off of work. Well.......this began the longest 3 months...of....my...life!

The plastic surgeon had to appeal, reappeal, reappeal, and reappeal again to the insurance company to get Option 1 approved. They automatically approve Option 2, but Option 1 they had to show medical need for a reduction on me. After 3 months of this process, insurance finally said their decision was final and Option 1 was out of the question. Seriously I could care less about keeping my nipples. The whole point is for me to reduce my risk as much as possible. But it was still disheartening to just know we lost the good fight against insurance.

Finally, after insurance said Option 2 was our only option that they'd pay for we got my surgery date set. Up until that point, I hadn't been nervous at all, but talk about getting a date set in stone and I started hyperventilating. This was real. This was serious. November 19th couldn't get here fast enough, but was also getting here too quickly for my nerves....