I decided to go ahead and see Dr. Mosier 2 weeks later, the plastic surgeon, just to see what he had to say and maybe look at some before and after pictures. He was just great! He made me feel so comfortable and secure. He explained everything in great detail and showed me pictures of his nipple reconstruction and honestly, my mom nor I could tell which was real and which was fake. I could tell he took a lot of pride in his work which made me feel much better. He gave me a timeline of what to expect and we took our “before” pictures and they sent off a letter to the insurance company to make sure this procedure would be covered which it should be minus the areola tattooing.
While at this appointment I learned even more about my moms 2nd battle with cancer. She was telling him her background and maybe I knew this before but forgot, but she had stage 4 metastatic (growing) duct cell invasive cancer. The milk ducts are what runs straight through to your nipple so at that point I realized nipple sparing would be a complete waste of time and energy. I knew right then and there that I would have to not only give up my natural breasts but also my nipples/areolas. That honestly made that decision that much easier for me.
A few weeks later they called me back and said insurance did not require a pre-approval/determination for this surgery and we set the surgery date for July 17, 2014.