Hello everyone! My name is Roxie, short for Roxanne, and I am an unlucky carrier of a mutant BRCA1 gene. What that means is that with my family history and breast tissue composition, I have an 80% lifetime chance of breast cancer and a 40% lifetime chance of ovarian cancer. My mother got breast cancer in her mid-40s from the same gene. She’s a survivor and an inspiration to take this path, as having watched her go through chemo, I know that rolling dice and hoping I get that 20% is not worth it physically or mentally. I’ve been scheduled for what is called a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy, which means I’m getting all my breast tissue removed to put my chances of breast cancer lower than a normal non-mutant gene carrier. I’m doing this so that I can have a long life to be there for those I care about. What many don’t talk about is the sheer amount of emotional hurdles you overcome in making this decision. Mastectomy patients usually lose all feeling in their chest; they don’t feel hugs, they don’t feel their clothes, and they don’t feel injuries if they bump into something.
It turns out there’s a kind of mastectomy done by a wonderful pair of surgeons named Anne and Ziv Peled where they preserve the nerves and graft the ones they have to cut to make sure things are oncologically up to protocol, and it’s only with this reassurance that I’ve been able to take the steps I need to start getting this taken care of. There is unfortunately a pretty big hiccup. I’ve been informed that the nerve-sparing portion of the surgery isn’t covered at all by my insurance only about a month out from the date that’s been set since last December. Nerve-sparing is the whole reason I’m traveling to California to get this done. Fortunately, he is a flat fee; this number will not change as any extra things needing to be done would fall under the breast surgeon who is fully covered as we hit our max out of pocket this year already just preparing for this behemoth. The flat fee is steep, however. $6,500 for the surgery fee, $10,000 for the nerve grafts, and $5,000 for the facility fee. That’s a total of $21,000. If there’s anything you can do to help me protect my peace and be able to keep feeling hugs after this miserable ordeal, I would be eternally grateful. Thank you.
Here’s a video of the surgeons in question explaining the procedure if you’re interested!
