Most television writers’ rooms consist of a conference table and a dozen industrial desk chairs. The Gilmore Girls room was the exception. Overstuffed sofas arranged on a plush rug reminded me of the lavish Hollywood Hills living rooms I used to frequent when I first moved to Los Angeles. New in town, I said yes to all invitations and regularly drove up treacherous roads to some grand house or other for a cocktail party hosted by a friend of a friend’s cousin who was invariably a high-powered producer or studio executive. The only prop that belied the function of the Gilmore Girls writers’ room was the dry-erase board that covered the length of a wall. Amy Sherman-Palladino was the creator of the show, and generic offices were not her style. She insisted that every nook of her domain match her outsized personality. Even the common bathroom was transformed into a frilly powder room—lotions in pretty bottles, candles, and exotic soaps lined the shelves. Amy herself was short with porcelain skin and jet black hair cropped at the shoulders. She dressed in outfits that harked back to the East Village of the 1980s—Betsy Johnson crinoline skirts with leggings, tight layered T-shirts, and, on occasion, a top hat. Amy’s office was a hybrid of French boudoir and kitsch. A chartreuse-colored divan swooned under the windows. Fringed lamps emitted amber light. Several stools covered with hot pink muppet fur were scattered around the room. The ceiling was painted in squares of discordant colors—purple, green, pink, blue. In the corner, a life-size mannequin posed in a Girl Scout uniform.
On a Friday afternoon when the whole writing staff was assembled, a woman from the New York Times called the office asking for me. One of the Gilmore producers continued outlining scenes on the board, while I picked up the extension on the far side of the room. The woman from the Times told me she was faxing over a contract for me to initial and sign. My article would be running the next day, in Saturday’s paper. My stomach dropped. My gratification over having completed the article was eclipsed by the sick feeling that I was about to be publicly exposed and there was no turning back. It was worse than the classic nightmare scenario of finding yourself standing onstage in your underwear. I would be onstage, naked from the waist up for all the world to see. My mother’s admonishment rang in my ears: “Never pose topless!” Strangers would stare at my breasts in morbid fascination.
When I hung up with the Times, Amy and her husband, Dan, my bosses, looked up with interest. “What was that about?”
For months, everyone who’d come through our offices had been subjected, ad nauseum, to my rants about the BRCA mutation. It was hard to believe this was the first Amy and Dan had heard of it, yet when I told them about my predicament and the article it spawned, they screwed up their faces in surprise. Amy looked at me in faux disbelief and asked, “Can’t you just dip your boobs in green tea?”
I’d experienced a strange phenomenon on every one of my writing jobs—as a general rule, the sweeter the television show, the meaner the bosses. Contrary to the cozy tone of Gilmore Girls, Amy and Dan were not what you would call warm. Amy openly identified with Darth Vader—something about how all of his underlings were incompetent, so of course the poor misunderstood guy had to kill them off, just as she’d been driven to fire a slew of employees. Ayn Rand was Amy’s moral authority: People with talent rose to the top, those without it perished, and thus the universe was ruthless and just. All in all, the green tea comment was rather tame.
Rebecca was as excited about the Op-Ed piece as if she’d written it herself. The moment we left the room, she burst out: “Jess, do you realize what a big deal this is? It’s not ‘Rory got drunk for the first time over spring break and, my heavens, will Lorelai’s remedy of greasy fries work for the next generation of Gilmore hangovers?’ It’s real, it’s about illness and life and what matters and it’s your own and Oh My God it’s the New York Times!”
That night I went out for sushi with my sister. Danielle looked polished and perfect in leggings and a pearl gray shawl, while I was haggard and wild-eyed. Danielle even made yoga leggings look glamorous—she had that ineffable quality passed down from our mother. Though I’d approached fashion with a new vigor since my mom’s death, putting myself together remained work for me, a chore. I could buy the designer dress, but I could never carry it off like Danielle. I would always have a label sticking out, a fraying hem, a rip in the seam. I had certainly not inherited the glamour gene that could be traced in a direct line from Harriette to Stephanie to Danielle.
It’s worth mentioning that my attitude toward material beauty had recently changed in more ways than one. In my early twenties, when I was hurt over what I perceived as my mother’s lack of maternal interest in me, I was judgmental about her passion for things. I saw her interests and pursuits as shallow. As she blossomed as a mom through her illness, my anger melted away and, with it, my disdain for the material things she loved. More than that, I now viewed my mother’s quest for beauty—in her appearance, her life, her work—not as superficial, but as an expression of her immense vitality. In the past I had dismissed her as shallow. I now perceived her in grand terms—a force of nature, deeply driven and utterly human. Her passion to create beauty was anything but trivial—it was the language in which she expressed her love of life.
Danielle and I sat at a small table in the Japanese restaurant. I was feeling neurotic and insecure. “What on earth spurred me to write about something this intimate?” I asked, downing hot sake. I rattled on about all the possible repercussions of the article. I pictured acquaintances reading the morning paper and choking on their cereal. I had dark thoughts about the pleasure my travails would give those who did not wish me well. I imagined Adrian’s wife thinking: Serves her right—she behaved badly and now she has to cut her breasts off as penance.
I speculated that maybe, on a subconscious level, I’d expressed my dilemma in a public way in order to push myself into the mastectomy. “Mom endured such horror and torment—God knows I don’t want cancer. But removing my breasts is so intense, so extreme—maybe I had to put the concept of mastectomy-as-responsible-choice out in the world to shame myself into doing it. But can I really go through with it …?” I blathered on, repeating everything I’d already said a thousand times, and Dani listened patiently. Eventually, I talked myself full-circle, back to the piece in the Times. “Will you e-mail some of Mom’s friends tonight? Alert them about tomorrow’s article? I write about Mom at length and I think it would be meaningful for them to read.”
Dani’s composure finally broke.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Her voice shook with barely contained anger. “I didn’t want to bring this up, because writing about it has been your process, but I am not comfortable with the whole thing. Your taking the test has canceled out my choice to remain sheltered from all of this. And your writing about it has taken away my privacy. I do not want to bring attention to the article. I just want it to pass as quickly as possible. I haven’t mentioned this sooner because, thankfully, most of my friends don’t read the Op-Ed page of the New York Times.”
I sat in stunned silence.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize—”
“It’s fine. It’s what you needed to do.”
I stayed over at Danielle’s apartment that night, but didn’t sleep at all. Lying awake, I considered Danielle’s situation and my own. I had not shown her the article even though she was featured in it. The central questions the article posed—Was knowledge power or ignorance bliss? Biotechnology now offered us the ability to know what diseases were in store for us, but was this helpful information?—were questions just as relevant to her life as they were to mine. In the piece I discussed the pros and cons of choosing knowledge over ignorance. With two imperfect choices, I’d elected to be forewarned of disease, while my sister had elected not to take the test, not to be burdened with knowledge.
Danielle was right. I had opened up her life for speculation by disclosing her choice.
I left early the next morning. I’d imagined we would buy the paper and read it together over breakfast, but now I felt awkward and guilty. I hadn’t thought through how I was dragging her into this, and I certainly hadn’t been sensitive to her feelings.
Bleary but wired, I drove to the newsstand on La Brea and bought a copy of the paper. March 5, 2005. I opened it in the parking lot. The illustration on the Op-Ed page made me gasp: a girl’s head superimposed over the form of an older woman with a serpent rising within her. Daughter and mother and snake as illness. It was powerful, dark, and beautiful. My article ran beneath it. Kay had told me there would be artwork, but I could never have imagined something this arresting.
The rest of the day was a blur. It felt like everyone I’d ever known was calling or e-mailing. Some people were shocked, others were moved, and still others expressed their profound sympathy. All said they could not fathom my dilemma. My dad was bursting with pride (kvelling). He called every ten minutes to inform me who had just read the article. “Marvin and Ethel called; Uncle Lee and Auntie Fran; your cousins Michael and Stacey; and you remember my friend Shelly Fireman? He owns Shelley’s in New York and a dozen other A-class restaurants? He read the article in the International Herald Tribune from his villa in Tuscany!” Then Danielle called. Her tone had changed entirely—she was quiet and warm. She said she’d been deeply affected by the piece and had composed an e-mail to a dozen of her closest friends—in addition to friends of our mom’s—proudly telling them to read her sister’s article. That was the greatest gift of the day.
That weekend, Danielle reported that the fancy New York City Jewish ladies were talking of nothing but the Op-Ed. Many of them knew our mother, many more were breast cancer survivors, and most had never heard of the BRCA test. Should they take it? What about their daughters? Everyone I spoke to told me the article had sparked passionate debate among family and friends. The resounding question: If they found themselves in my shoes, what would they do? Would they choose to know their genetic status or not to know? It seemed that people strongly gravitated to one side or the other, just like me and Danielle.
At work on Monday, Amy entered the writers’ room in a blur of excitement. “Howard Stern was talking about Jessica on the radio! Robyn brought up this article about a girl having to decide whether to cut her boobs off, and Howard and Artie chimed in, and I was like—holy shit—they’re talking about Jessica! That is so fucking cool!”
Dan Palladino complimented me on the article two times. From Amy and Dan, this was an onslaught of approbation.
I continued to get messages from people I knew, people I barely knew, and people I didn’t know at all. I got e-mails from friends of friends who had similar histories of cancer in their families, asking questions and soliciting advice. People contacted me to share their personal breast cancer stories. Someone who identified himself as a doctor from Australia repeatedly called the Gilmore Girls office saying he had to stop me before I did anything rash because he’d invented a concoction of mushrooms that prevented cancer. Friends told me they’d forwarded my article to other friends who were at high risk to inspire them to take the test. My agent Jeff called multiple times. Good Morning America had contacted William Morris because they had a piece on breast cancer and genetics set to go but didn’t have a face to personalize it—could they interview me? They would send a film crew over to put me on tape the next morning at around five a.m. A documentary filmmaker wanted to follow me and Danielle and chronicle our medical journeys. A producer from Nightline called—would I agree to do a segment? And the literary division of William Morris in New York called—would I want to write a book?
To all of this Kay said: “Ah, the reach of the New York Times ….”
All of this attention made one thing abundantly clear: The predicament I faced truly was new and shocking. It was uncharted territory and it had struck a collective nerve.
I hadn’t slept in days and couldn’t see straight. I told Jeff I could not appear on Good Morning America the next day. I’d trip over my words, say crazy things, and be of no use to the cause of women’s cancer prevention. A documentary? Not in a million years. I hated cameras; being followed by one would be exquisite torture. I asked Jeff what he thought I should do. He suggested I spend some time thinking about whether I’d want to write further about this topic, to consider the idea of writing a book. And he thought it would be worthwhile to do one substantive interview. I returned the call from the producer at Nightline, a young woman my age named Courtney. We hit it off right away; she was smart and empathetic and down to earth. Courtney had read the article and wanted to find out if I’d be interested in doing an interview before she pitched it to her boss. As it happened, my friend Liza’s mother-in-law is the journalist Cokie Roberts, herself a breast cancer survivor. When I had frantically been researching BRCA, Liza had put me in touch with Cokie. We spoke on the phone, and I later called her oncologist at the National Cancer Institute for advice. I knew Cokie Roberts had worked on Nightline and assumed she had alerted Courtney of the article. “No,” Courtney said, “but I do know her, and she occasionally still does interviews for us. Maybe she would do this one.” I called Liza, who called Cokie, who immediately agreed to do it. The next thing I knew, I’d signed up for an appearance on Nightline.
After the hoopla died down, I was left with myself and my breast cancer gene. The Nightline interview was scheduled for late April, six weeks away. “You’d better figure out what course of action you’re going to take before you go on national television,” Kay said. I did not respond.
I’d been spending a lot of time lately reading the FORCE message boards, but I still considered myself a voyeur rather than a participant. I had never posted a question; I had anonymously been reading threads about the different methods of breast reconstruction. There were so many choices, it was dizzying. The two major categories were autogenous reconstruction and implant reconstruction. The first uses your own body’s tissue to reconstruct the breasts, and I was astonished by how many body sites you could snag tissue from. Doctors could create “flaps” from the tummy, the tush, the back, the thigh. Let’s say you zeroed in on an area—settled on donating your excess stomach fat to the cause—oh, the choices that remained! The menu was as long and nuanced as Starbucks’. Are you a venti, nonfat, decaf carmel macchiato kind of girl? Perhaps you’d like attached flaps—your stomach fat and muscle will be slid under the skin to the mastectomy site and shaped into breasts while remaining attached by a strip of muscle to its original blood supply. Or are you a tazo iced chai latte with soy milk type? Then free flaps could be for you—tummy fat with only a small portion of muscle completely removed from the donor site and transplanted to the chest. Maybe you’re a classic café Americano drinker—perforator flaps are the way to go: use of abdominal skin and fat without sacrificing any muscle, carefully dissected by a skilled microsurgeon and reconnected to the chest’s blood vessels. Implant reconstruction had no fewer options. There was the two-step expander-reconstruction process or the cutting-edge one-step alloderm procedure. Treatises had been written on the matter of silicone versus saline implants. I read the FORCE site regularly, but I read from a safe distance. I could not identify myself as one of them. The procedures were too graphic, too brutal. I could not yet make the leap.
A few days later, I received a letter in the mail. It had been addressed to me, care of my father’s law office, and forwarded to me by his secretary.
Dear Jessica Queller,
I read your piece in the New York Times. It was so good and something that so many women are forced to ponder.
I’m writing because I knew your mother, Stephanie, and was so sad last year when I saw that she had died (I read an obituary in the Times) and then because we had the same surgeon I asked Dr. Daniel Roses on my next visit was it really Stephanie who had died? I knew, but didn’t want to know—cliché though that sounds. And Dr. Roses is a great surgeon and professional beyond words, but he is an uptight, precise, and at times “detached” man. Yet when I asked him about your mother—it was the first time in nearly eleven years that he paused, his face and the tone of his voice changed and he actually stood facing me. He became quite emotional as he spoke about your mother—how much she meant to him and other doctors at NYU and that “she had extraordinary daughters. They are wonderful women,” he said. Any patient of Dr. Roses knows the “routine” (if one can say going for a lifetime’s worth of six-month checkups for breast cancer is routine) of Dr. Roses coming into the examining room, saying a few words and conducting a very quick but thorough exam and then exiting. I know your mother would know what I am talking about. However, as I said, this was the first time that I saw him as a man and not a surgeon—a man who knew how special your mother was.
I met your mother and father one Saturday morning in the week following both your mother’s and my breast cancer surgeries. Both your mother and I (and your father) were waiting for Dr. Roses, who was making a special visit to his office on a weekend morning because both your mother and I needed to be drained. I’m sure you know what this means. (For a time after breast cancer surgery there is a huge amount of lymphatic fluid that is constantly collecting and thus must be drained.) I had just turned forty and my third son was twelve months old. Your mother was fifty. Right away we liked one another and we were the first “breast cancer friends” one another had come into contact with in the days following our surgeries. Also, I am not a “political breast cancer patient.” I don’t go on marches and don’t seek out other women who have had breast cancer. I don’t wear a pink baseball cap and a Susan Komen T-shirt. It just isn’t me. I got the feeling that your mother, too (as we stood outside Dr. Roses’s office waiting for him to arrive), was a more discreet person and not one to devote her life to being a “survivor” (a word I really don’t like). I think that is just one of the reasons I liked her so much and why she struck me. She was optimistic that morning, funny, nervous, and anxious (we both were)—but still upbeat and she talked about her job and you and your sister. Also, your mother was just beautiful. And she was so sweet in her beauty and so humble being that she had a very important and high-powered job.
The following Saturday morning again—your mother and father and I found ourselves at the hospital very early and thus we all sat in the downstairs waiting area of NYU to again wait for Dr. Roses. By this time the fact that your mother and I were beginning to truly try and wrap our minds around the fact that we had cancer was more evident. Too, in the week since we had seen one another we had both been to see the same oncologist for the first time and the prospect of upcoming chemotherapy had both your mother and I much more agitated, scared, and helpless this day. Yet we found such comfort in one another. We practically ran into one another’s arms in the lobby that day. I was wearing a wig over my long brown hair. After my visit to the oncologist that week I had run out and bought two very expensive long-brown-haired wigs from the fanciest store on 57th Street. I told your mother that it was exactly what the oncologist had not advised. “Don’t go out and spend a lot of money on a wig,” she had said. And with that I did just the opposite. I told your mother this and she understood completely and we laughed. Both of us were vain and cared about how we looked. We went into a ladies’ room together while your father sat outside reading the New York Times and like two teenagers we nervously giggled and I showed her my wig in detail. (As it turned out I ended up with an oncologist from Mount Sinai and he recommended a less potent chemotherapy and I never ended up losing my hair. It thinned out a bit and I was sick as a dog after every infusion, but I didn’t have to go through that horrifying result of chemotherapy.) After we saw Dr. Roses that morning we traded phone numbers. I never saw your mother again, but for three years we stayed in constant phone contact. As busy as your mother was she ALWAYS called me and she ALWAYS returned my calls.
After your mother’s first chemotherapy treatment I called her. She was so cute on the phone. She laughed and told me that she and your father had ordered Chinese food that night and told me how strange it tasted. She made some very funny analogy which I don’t remember. What I do remember is how relaxed and accepting she was of what she had gone through that day for the first time.
In many of our phone calls your mother indicated how concerned she was about her “girls.” That seemed to be foremost on her mind—that she didn’t want you and your sister to worry nor have added stress in your lives.
I never saw your mother again after that second time at the hospital waiting for Dr. Roses, but she was so important in my life—as a buddy. We talked about many things other than our health. We shared stories about our children, New York City, jobs, marriages—the gamut. Three years later I had a recurrence of breast cancer and though it had appeared in my left breast again I opted to have a double radical mastectomy with reconstruction that took two and a half years. I didn’t want to bring your mother down with my news so we lost touch after that. Then, as I said, I saw the obituary listing last year in the Times. I was so upset that I did something that may sound “sick,” but in a way it shows what an effect your mother and her spirit had on me. I didn’t want to believe that it was the same Stephanie Queller and so I called her cell phone. Her voice was on the recording and thus until I saw Dr. Roses a few weeks later as I wrote to you already I went around believing that your mother had not died. It is strange in life … a dear relative might die and one doesn’t shed a tear and yet the death of someone whom one didn’t know for a long time, someone who one met incidentally, can be far more heartbreaking.
I had always wanted to write to you and your sister, but you wouldn’t know who the hell I was. So when I saw your piece in yesterday’s Times I felt sad, but also blessed that perhaps now I could write to you and tell you that I loved your mother and how much she meant to me. And because I was ten or eleven years younger she treated me as a friend, but also in a motherly way—especially because I had a twelve-year-old son and two babies in diapers.
Please know that I am and have always thought about you and your sister and your dear mother for a long time and always will.
With much love,
Liza Wherry
After reading this letter, I wept the whole night.
The next morning I set up appointments to interview breast surgeons.
My friend Kelly came with me to see the first doctor. Kelly and I had acted in a play together right out of college; she’d been a far more experienced actress than I and had taken me under her wing. I’d known her two little boys since they were born and was uncommonly close with them. Whenever I wanted a real meal or the comfort of home, I went to Kelly’s house. She was my family in Los Angeles. Dr. Anderson was a veteran surgeon with an excellent reputation. Soft-spoken and articulate with sparkling, intelligent eyes, Dr. Anderson was straight out of central casting as the wise, venerable doctor. I felt immediately at ease. His breadth of knowledge on the BRCA mutation was vast. He spent two hours answering my questions. I wanted to know if I was being melodramatic. By this point, many doctors had recommended mastectomy, but what was the truth about vigilant screening? How effective was it really? Had I gotten carried away with my research and convinced myself that I needed to take this drastic measure, when screening was the more rational choice?
Dr. Anderson assured me that I was not being overly dramatic. Though surveillance was a reasonable choice, it would always carry with it a strong level of uncertainty. Even if mammography or MRI detects a tumor at its earliest stage, there are certain types of aggressive cancer that start spreading the moment the cells are malignant. Regardless of how careful the screening, there would never be a way of ensuring that a found cancer would not require chemo or hadn’t already spread.
“Suppose I did surveillance and we spotted cancer at the earliest stage, and let’s assume it was not invasive. In that best-case scenario, what would the treatment be?”
Dr. Anderson said at minimum I would have a lumpectomy and radiation. However, if the cancer returned, or if a new primary cancer developed, and I opted for double mastectomy and reconstruction down the line, it would be much trickier cosmetically because radiated skin is difficult to work with. Radiated skin is much more likely to form a hard capsule around an implant. Also, being BRCA-1-positive means that the residual breast tissue after a lumpectomy may still carry the 87 percent chance of cancer. Given those odds, once I got breast cancer, mastectomy would be recommended. I turned to Kelly. Was there a point in doing surveillance, waiting for cancer to strike, and then getting a mastectomy anyway? In that case, I would always have to live with the threat of a recurrence—that one renegade cancer cell had been left behind and would resurface somewhere else in my body. Was that worth a few more years of natural breasts?
Dr. Anderson told me that Dr. Susan Love, the famous breast cancer surgeon and author, had long been the strongest opponent of preventative mastectomy. Her argument was that no surgeon could get every single breast cell out—some tissue would always remain. And if every cell carries the elevated risk of cancer, what was the point of surgery? She contended that the risk of breast cancer was a question not of how much breast tissue you have, but of how much whatever tissue you do have is acted on by carcinogens and other factors that cause cancer. The counterargument was that removing vast amounts of breast tissue would dramatically decrease the odds of cancer. Once the data came out from recent BRCA studies confirming this, Dr. Love publicly announced that she stood corrected: Preventative mastectomy is undeniably effective.
I had been harping for months on the psychological downsides to mastectomy. We now spoke about the psychological benefits. If I chose surveillance, I would continue to have scares because of my naturally dense, cystic breasts. I would fear every lump was cancer. I would likely be subjected to many biopsies and probably lumpectomies in doctors’ vigilance to rule out cancer. I would always be waiting for the other shoe to drop; I would be subjected to emotionally exhausting tests every three months.
“That’s one of the reasons my friend Suzy decided to go forward with prophylactic mastectomy. She didn’t want to agonize over every lump for the rest of her life. She didn’t want to be terrorized by fear,” I said.
I asked Dr. Anderson about the statistics. Everything I’d read stated that prophylactic mastectomy decreases the odds of breast cancer by 90 percent, not 100. Still, a 10 percent chance of breast cancer even after undergoing a radical mastectomy was not minuscule. Every woman in America has a 10 percent chance of getting breast cancer. Dr. Anderson spent a good deal of time emphasizing the necessity of a very meticulous, thorough mastectomy. “That’s the art of it,” he said. “It is crucial to choose a surgeon who is aggressive, who will remove every bit of tissue possible.” In Dr. Anderson’s opinion, for a woman operated on by an excellent surgeon, the odds of getting breast cancer would be closer to 3 percent than 10, though data did not yet exist to back that up.
Last, we spoke of what type of mastectomy he recommended. From my readings on the FORCE Web site, I asked about the differences between skin-sparing, subcutaneous, and nipple-sparing mastectomies.
“Skin-sparing mastectomy, but not nipple-sparing is my recommendation,” Dr. Anderson said. “Nipples are breast tissue and at risk of carcinoma.”
He explained that subcutaneous mastectomy is a procedure that removes tissue through an incision under the breast, leaving the skin, nipple, and areola intact. The appeal of this procedure is the aesthetic result—after reconstruction there are no visible scars due to the incisions being hidden under the breasts; also, the patient retains her own nipples. However, working through an incision under the breast makes it impossible for the surgeon to remove as much tissue as the other procedures allow. In a nipple-sparing mastectomy the incision is made around the areola, which enables the surgeon to remove more tissue than in the subcutaneous procedure; however, the nipple and areola are still preserved, which increases cancer risk. Skin-sparing mastectomy—Dr. Anderson’s choice—preserves the breast skin to hold and shape the reconstructed breasts, but entirely removes the nipples and areolas. Dr. Anderson’s philosophy was to be as thorough as possible in removing at-risk tissue. This made sense to me. Why take this extreme measure without lowering your cancer odds as much as possible?
If I chose to undergo a skin-sparing mastectomy, the nipples would have to be reconstructed, and there were various methods to choose from. I would need to discuss that aspect as well as what type of reconstruction was best for me with a plastic surgeon. Dr. Anderson gave me the name of a colleague who he said did excellent work.
“I have one more question,” I said. “I know that Myriad Labs performs all the BRCA tests in the country. Have you ever heard of them making a mistake? Is there a slim chance that my BRCA-positive test results could be wrong? Maybe I should take the test again.”
“I’ve never heard of such an error. If you take the test again and receive negative results, your case would spur a national medical conference.”
Kelly and I walked out of the office, oversaturated with information. We did not speak until we got into the elevator.
“I’m going to cancel my appointments with the other breast surgeons,” I said.
“You’re not going to do the surgery?” Kelly asked.
“I am going to do the surgery,” I said with certainty. “Dr. Anderson is the right surgeon.”