Advise and Consent

I realized I never talked about my first meeting with Doc, so I'm going to get on that right now.

People are curious about plastic surgery (you're here, aren't you?) When I made my appointment with Doc, I had a couple of dear friends offer to come with me for moral support. It's not like I'm going to the doctor for a real health problem--no one wants to deal with that or offers to come along; it's pretty unpleasant (Hey! Come on over and watch me get sensors stuck to me to check out my heart murmur!), but folks are more than happy to tag along for this.

Doc's office is over in Annandale, Virginia, near the hospital. It was an icy day in mid-January and, well, who am I kidding, I was running late because I always am, ice or no ice. I felt sort of bad going in to the MOB (that's Medical Office Building...I work at an architectural firm and was SO CONFUSED as to what that meant for...a while...an embarrassing long while, so I'm doing you a public service here in case you ever find yourself working with some architects, or if it's ever a question on Jeopardy) because in the elevator with me were an old couple, clearly in their declining years (what do I know, it could be their declining months, or days), probably there for some serious condition, and I felt so frivolous. cf. Catholic guilt complex.

The office was very nice, they were very accommodating of my rude lateness, and I sat in the waiting room flipping through Doc and his partners' brag book, which was a big binder with all the glowing feedback from his patients. Look at all these people, I thought. They're happy and, most importantly, alive and presumably not disfigured!

I met with one of the nurses and we talked a little bit about why I didn't like my nose and I mentioned aforementioned heart murmur and we talked about my medical history. Then Doc came in and we chit-chatted about why I was there and we covered my questions which were mainly about the pain (not supposed to be too bad), what could go wrong, wrong, horribly wrong (could have to come in and have it done again in a year if it doesn't heal correctly, which happens to about 10% of patients, could have burst blood vessels, things of that nature, but he said he hasn't had anything really awful happen), and healing time (swelling will go down after the first few weeks, and my nose will look smaller even though it'll be swollen, but the end result won't be apparent for about eight months) .

Oh yes, exercise, which I've mentioned before...As Doc put it, everyone in the D.C. area is too type-A and is mad about working out but basically, I need to just lay off strenuous activity because it encourages the nose to swell. I can pick back up in about six weeks or so, but let me tell you, based on my running-into-a-glass-wall trick, exercise really does make you swell up. Plus, who wants to jeopardize a rather costly and delicate (for a while, anyway) new nose just to be a hotshot on the tennis court for an hour? It reminds me of this classic exchange in one of my favorite movies, Clueless:

Amber Mariens: Miss Stoeger, my plastic surgeon doesn't want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose.
Dionne Davenport: Well, there goes your social life.


The surgery itself will be done in Doc's own operating room as opposed to the hospital (with which, as I'm told by another patient, I'm better off since hospitals tend to put you on the back burner and you can be sitting there for ages, starving and dehydrated, waiting to go into the OR). It'll take about an hour, and then the nurses will keep an eye on me for a little while before I'm allowed to go home.

The worst part of it all is supposed to be the packing--everybody always talks about the packing. Back in the bad old days, they stuffed a bunch of cotton in your nose, so much so that people say they didn't realize that much cotton could be stuffed up your nose. Nowadays, they just put some small absorbent things up there that I take out myself the next day. I'm still not clear on that...Will let you know how that goes.

So after we went through all of that, Doc looked at my nose: in the nose, side of the nose, other side of the nose, up down, tilt my head back...Yep, it's a nose. Then we talked about what he's going to do. My main concern was that my nose is too wide on the top part and maybe a little too long. Doc intends to narrow that wide part, take down a wee bump, and define the tip. The latter two I didn't even think about; I've always been so irritated by how wide my nose is. Apparently this cartilage part is what take the longest to heal (which surprised me) and which stays swollen the longest (I think it's mainly because of the number of oil glands there, I've forgotten).

Then we looked at some pictures of his patients (very nice work--no one looked overdone) and some pictures of Michael Jackson and Doc started talking about what went wrong with the King of Pop. In a plastic surgery sense, anyway. I guess a lot of people worry about looking like Michael Jackson. I'm not worried about that, mainly just confused as to how you can have all that money and have whomever you want do your nose and still end up that screwed up.

That was pretty much it with Doc. Then I went over and talked to his patient coordinator who talked about the financials and scheduling. It's going to be $5375 for the whole deal--anaesthesia, actual surgery and operating room fees. The prescriptions will be covered by my regular health insurance, so there's just the co-pay for that. The schedule was pretty wide open to me at that point, I guess it picks up a bit more in the spring and summer, but I didn't book that day, I wanted to call my aunt, who, after all, is footing the bill for this, before I did anything.

My aunt was a-ok with it, it was actually less money than she anticipated, so I called up Doc's office to book. I could have gone in as early as February (you need at least two weeks to do the required no-drinking, no-aspirin, meet-with-the-doctor prep work), but I had a business trip planned, and there's this big yearly event at work that I have to attend, so I had to schedule around that. Oh yes, and I had to put $500 down.

So that's what you can expect when you go in for your appointment with your plastic surgeon. My next appointment is on Friday--I might actually put up some pictures of me (eek). I'm not exactly sure what-all is going to happen, but as always, stay tuned.