Finding your asocial savants

Not to make any sweeping generalizations, but the thing that I've notices about people who are absolutely devoted to their island of brilliance is that they have zero social skills. This is especially true of people in the medical profession, as lives are on the line in a very literal sense.

After my dramatic exit from the previous and conservative breast surgeon, I found myself the head of the department, and as pro-active as they come. Her bedside manner left a whole lot to be desired, especially since any sort of exam is ripe for (clearly unappreciated) humor. I supposed asking her if she's the "chief booby inspector" as she's inserting the longest biopsy needle you've ever seen gets old eventually. Nonetheless, I can wax poetic for days about this woman. She has the pantsuit repertoire rivaling only Hilary Clinton, an extensive collection of avant-garde brooches, and is the tiniest, but profoundly intimidating little Pakistani pixie. 

Those built-in assumptions snuck in again in any consultation I had with her, so I simply lied and said I had a husband all lined up, and that there were work-arounds for having no breast sensation or the ability to breast feed. I lied, Dr. K! It's not a clitoridectomy, for fucks sake. There were more pressing matters at hand, like not having to do radiation/chemotherapy at 25, for instance. In any case, she was my breast oncologist, and I was happy to have her on my team. Next came choosing the reconstructive surgeon, which is really where the asocial fun began. 

He was recommended to me by pretty much everyone in the breast oncology department, which is pretty hard to argue with. I was going in blind because I had already promised myself I wouldn't look at before and after pictures of mastectomies, because frankly, they're terrifying. During my consult, which amounts to nothing more than some light fondling, mind you, he kept saying under his breath, "Good skin, yeah, good skin." I was visibly cringing the whole time. 

But you can't argue with his overwhelming amount of recommendations, so my team was complete.