Eugh, the top surgery team are trying to contact me again and I don't want to talk to them. They reduced me to tears last time with their bullshit and I just don't think i'm yet in a place where I can deal with their ongoing rejection and lectures. Like they actually sat there and fucking lectured me about why I was "high risk" and how they probably couldn't go ahead, pretty much outright told me "because of your preexisting conditions we probably can't actually do this, you'll have to find a different surgeon" and still think I want to talk to them? You fuckers told me you couldn't do it! I have fucking grieved over it for months and it's still raw and painful. Why are you contacting me again acting like it's all fine and dandy? Is it so you can lecture me again, make me feel like shit and throw me into a depression cycle AGAIN? Does it bring you some sort of perverse joy to upset me?
FUCK OFF.
Eugh.
I''m going to have to email them telling them to leave me alone.
Yes it's burning the bridge but let's be real here, given the 10 minute fucking lecture last time, I don't think this was ever going to go ahead and even if it was, do I really want a team who talk down to me like i'm a child handling my care for something that's so emotionally and physically taxing?
Top surgery is one of those funny things where there's a lot of feelings involved, it's not uncommon for people to get extremely emotional afterwards, it's like this weight being lifted but also this massive change to your body and sense of self and it's a lot. I've seen so many stories of people sobbing uncontrollably and not being certain if it's joy or sorrow, it's just raw emotion.
It leaves you very vulnerable and do I really trust a team who's spokesperson made me feel stupid?
Because she did. She made me feel stupid, naive and ignorant. I did not enjoy that conversation at all and I have no desire to speak to her again and I certainly don't want to be spoken to like that when i'm in a highly emotional state.
It sucks and ultimately I DO think they're being overly paranoid but that's their protocol and given all my health problems, it means it's very likely if I wanted surgery i'd have to have it done by the NHS doctors rather than the contractors. The problem is, the NHS doctors do the old fashioned "good enough" method and haven't innovated or changed in decades, it's very much the "it'll do" technique rather than trying to get the best possible result. The reason this particular surgeon (who was my second choice as my first choice no longer practices in the south) was the one I picked is because she's been working for years to innovate techniques that improve healing and aesthetics and if i'm going to put myself through the trauma of surgery, I want it done WELL, not "good enough".
But from the last conversation, it doesn't look like that's actually viable for me.
They're also demanding a load of paperwork I cannot obtain. They want a mammogram done, my gp won't refer me and when I rang the hospital they said they won't do one because i'm too young, so i'd need to do that privately and that's a whole ordeal.
I can't get a hold of my nephrologist easily either, when I did contact him I just got a brief email back saying "yes, they can have surgery" but they want a whole load of paperwork from him and weren't very clear about precisely WHAT he needed to provide.
And the biggest problem is that i'm extremely horribly honest, so when a medical professional asks me "do you have any preexisting conditions" I tell them ALL of it, even if it's probably irrelevant. And then that fucks me.
I bet most people wouldn't have mentioned any of it, but they asked so I told them and the more I told them the more unhappy the woman on the phone sounded until she stopped me speaking and started to lecture me.
I don't want to do that again. Just thinking about it has me welling up.
And that's the thing. This whole ordeal has been extremely emotionally taxing for me. I've said before that if I could snap my fingers and have a flat chest I would, but the reality is that I need to jump through countless hoops, hit roadblock after roadblock and force my way through so much red tape, then subject myself to the trauma of hospital and healing. Given my past trauma not only with surgeries themselves but with accessing medical care in the first place, this whole thing is triggering me badly. Every roadblock brings up decades of grief and trauma and upset, it reopens old wounds. and I really don't think i'm well enough mentally to put myself through another fight.
I mean, just getting that scar dealt with was hard enough. So many back and forths, so many times I just wanted to quit because it was too hard and was hurting me too much. But in that case the pain I was in was the only thing keeping me going, because continuing to live with that pain was worse than the pain of pushing forward. But with this one? My chest doesn't hurt me, not much anymore, not now my hormones are sorted. It's just aesthetics, they're ugly, they gross me out, I feel a creeping sense of unease when I think about them, but i've lived with that for 30 years, i've become pretty accustomed to ignoring the "ick". It's not physical pain that leaves me unable to walk or sit or function, it's just "ick". I can live with ick.
And that makes pushing through all the shit so much harder because at the end of the day, it's easier, it's less stress, it's less emotional toll to just roll over and quit.
YES, I would have liked to have this done. But it's too hard. It's causing me too much grief and emotional pain. I need to protect myself and not trigger the ptsd, and the roadblocks, and the lectures.... the hopeless feeling that i'm not worthy of help or compassion and i'm just a stupid hysterical little idiot kicks in. DECADES of doctors treating me as such, talking down to me, making me feel small, it's left deep scars and I suspect that's why i'm finding this all so difficult, coupled with the whole emotional aspect of dysphoria on top. I don't want to push forward, I don't want to speak to this person because it reopens those wounds. It makes me feel belittled and foolish and helpless and I fucking hate feeling like that.
So yeah. I don't want to talk to them. I don't have the mental fortitude to push forward with this, I may never have it. I just want to ghost them and be left alone to lick my wounds in peace.
Let me fucking grieve. Because I haven't finished that process yet.
And it IS a grieving process.
I thought this would be straightforward, I thought it'd be a long wait but overall be fairly simple because for everyone else it seems to be. Thousands of people post their success stories, their photos, their joy at finally having it done and I admit, I seethe with envy at how fucking easy it is for them. They just make the request, go along, have it done. But nothing is ever simple or straightforward for me. I get such envy and also bitterness thinking "why can't it be easy for me too?" "why can't I have that?"
and so I have to grieve and come to terms with the reality. I'm high risk and it's extremely unlikely any private surgeon will touch me. And i'll have to run around and stress myself out getting all this paperwork in place, only to be told "yeah you're still too high risk and we're not comfortable doing it, bye."
Why do that to myself? Why go through all that? Why fight when I already know the result? The woman on the phone already TOLD me.
But fucking hell, I hate how much this triggers me and how emotional it makes me. And that's another reason to just walk away from it. I don't like how it makes me feel. I don't like crying, I don't want to cry and it pisses me off having to explain to the people around me why i'm sobbing because they don't fucking get it and it makes me feel STUPID.
I'm going to go have a shower. It's less obvious you're crying if you're in the shower. -_-
