I had just completed my last operation of the day, a bilateral immediate breast reconstruction on a young mother of two small children recently diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, with her husband, sister, parents, and a close friend anxiously waiting to hear from me about how her surgery went. My patient's mother was a breast cancer survivor herself, and both she and her mother carried the BRCA1 gene. As my patient was being wheeled out of the operating room and into the recovery room, and after reassuring her family that the operation had gone well and that she was stable, awake, and comfortable, I checked my phone for messages and there was a voicemail from my mother that my dad had tripped and fallen at home and was in terrible pain, that she had phoned 911, and to please call as soon as I could. They were in New York, and I was in South Carolina, where I live and practice.
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