I was trying to figure out which hospital this happened at, and strangely, the article seems to completely avoid the issue, even as it quotes their official statement and notes her doing a sit-in there. (Cleveland Clinic.)

That article left me completely enraged

That is horrifying.

When I was seeing a breast surgeon about my severe fibrocystic tissue problems/pain, I asked whether a reduction would be an option because I think I'd qualify on standard grounds and I know that's helped some people and the surgeon immediately said no because my affected tissue goes deep enough they'd have to remove the whole breasts and even that might not solve the problem. But I'm grateful to heebie and others who've made my default response to that option as "okay, well, people live with that fine!" and no horror at all. It's not the direction I'm going for care, but that other people are open about their experiences helps. I wish it helped these doctors too.

That article left me completely enraged

Seconded. It's hard to think of other surgeries for which it would be even half-way acceptable for the surgeon to ignore explicit instructions like that.

Obviously it's not acceptable in this case either, but the sexism seems obvious as well.

She felt panicked, but her body was unable to move.

Terrifying. And rage-inducing. And what's really disturbing to me is that I'm not even surprised.

Also: I guess this is a thread where I might register my strong objections to the "save the ta-tas" line of campaigning for funds and support for breast cancer research? As if it's a woman's breasts that need saving, and not the woman, not the life of the woman, herself. My mother died of breast cancer (of a particularly nasty and aggressive form of invasive lobular carcinoma); and I'm pretty sure she would have happily agreed to live without "ta-tas" if it could have bought her more time...

It's particularly infuriating that the hospital found that the doctor hadn't done anything wrong.

Meanwhile, don't even get me started on "ta-tas" campaigns. How the hell do they think that makes people like me who have lost their breasts to cancer feel?

You know what weirds me out about "it's just hard to make a flat chest without skin flaps"? Aren't there a lot of people getting gender-confirmation top surgery? Different motivation, but the same desire cosmetic result, and I've never heard of this specific problem.

Do they go to different surgeons, who have had different training?

On some level yes, but if it's a solved problem, then breast surgeons are responsible for either getting the right training or saying that they're incompetent to produce a cosmetically acceptable flat chest and referring to a surgeon who can do it.

That sounds like more work than just doing it the old way.

Waiting until somebody is too sedated to respond but still able to hear before saying you're going to ignore their instructions is probably about the worst way to handle things that doesn't involve sewing your watch under the skin as a spacer.

There was a surgeon in NY a few years back who got busted burning his initials into patients' internal organs. That was pretty epic.

12: Wow.

Surgeons who aren't trained in cosmetic surgery may well have a hard time creating a pleasing result. The scar where I had a benign lump removed from my shoulder by a plastic surgeon is beautifully flat and inconspicuous, but the one from my hysterectomy makes my stomach look like a badly stuffed cushion.

12: I think there was one who put his initials on an appendix-removal scar.