H. Daniel Atwood

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 1.0

Nov 22, 2024

Dr. Atwood is so easy-going, charming, with an excellent bedside manner-as long as you are the perfect patient. Which I was, until I wasn’t.
I was diagnosed with stage 3 invasive ductal carcinoma Feb 17th, 2016. Dr. Atwood recommended a latissimus dorsi flap surgery, which takes the largest muscle in the upper back and loops it under the skin to the chest wall, improving blood flow and allowing faster healing after bilateral mastectomy. When asked what the side effects of this were, he smiled in response and stated “you won’t be able to row a canoe as well, or drive a golf ball as far”. Which sounded fine to me! The concept of not having breast reconstruction at all was never mentioned. And Dr. Atwood’s considerable easiness and charm made me trust him.
Months later, in agony of severe chronic nerve pain, I found a medical journal from the UK showing a statistic of 74% of women who have a latissimus dorsi flap surgery end up in chronic life-altering pain.
At my one year follow up, I was crying and begging for his help, asking when the pain would go away. He smiled and lied to me again. “It will,” he says.
It took me 18 months of my own research to discover a condition called CRPS, nicknamed The Suicide Disease, due to the powerful levels of pain, graded at about amputation level. I was diagnosed with this condition by a pain management doctor. I also learned that other women who have had this procedure done also suffer greatly, and this practice is considered barbaric.
When in discussion with Dr. Atwood regarding reconstructive surgery, if you ask him if implants are safe, he will say unequivocally “yes!”.
Ah, but what he doesn’t offer you is the information regarding the ingredients in breast implants (even saline have silicone shells).
The heavy metals and toxins on breast implants are pesticide level poisons. But women are not given this basic information, like a warning that we get with any prescription drug and its side effects.
And don’t dare go see Dr. Atwood again, complaining of not only extreme pain, but also illnesses that gradually pile up and weigh you down until you cannot speak for the brain fog, and you cannot walk for the pain in your bones, joints, muscles. The autoimmune disorders that pile up like dirty laundry around you. The complete inability to take care of yourself, depending on others to bring you food and water and even to help you sit in the shower and wash your hair for you. And yet, you still go see this doctor, hoping he has some insight to what turned your slender, beautiful 42 year old body into a mass of useless bone and tendon, glowing with pain.
When you cry in his office, he leaves the room without speaking, questions unanswered.
Somehow, through the pain and the fog, you find other women suffering in online forums about breast cancer, reconstruction, and BREAST IMPLANT ILLNESS. When you mention those 3 words in yet another appointment, hoping for answers, Dr. Atwood will deny it is real. And leave the room again.
Then you discover a gene called the HLA-B27 gene that rejects silicone. You ask your oncologist to test for this. You find out that you test positive. At this point those toxic bags of pesticide chemicals have been in your body for 4 years. They have caused lesions on your spleen, pancreas, liver, kidneys, and lungs. Your lymphatic system glows like a lit Christmas tree in MRI’s, showing sarcoidosis (inflammation). Your brain, spinal cord, lungs and heart have also accumulated damages. You even show Dr. Atwood the angry red skin around your reconstructed breasts, and he mumbles “that’s just blood flow” and vacated the room without answering your questions, yet again.
Ladies, do your research. Get on social media forums and discussions about your health. Find women who live in huge urban areas where the “Good” doctors are. Find out what the procedures they suggest could do to your life, and don’t trust the doctors to answer you honestly. It might save your life.

Lilah Stiger — google_place

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