Today was another one of those bad news/good news days. Bad news: the request I made to Anthem Blue Cross to consider the plastic surgeon I was referred to here in Marin as "in-network" was denied. Why? Because even though they didn't originally show up on the Anthem website, there apparently are two plastic surgeons that *are* covered...but they're in San Francisco. Once I got over being scared and then pissed that Anthem feels it's perfectly okay to have zero in-network plastic surgeons in a county that has one of the highest breast cancer rates in the state if not the country, and filed both an appeal--which I was then told would take 30 (!) days to resolve--and a complaint about both those things, I took a deep breath and looked for the good news.

The good news is, once I looked up the two in-network San Franciscan plastic surgeons, I found they were both impressively qualified UCSF surgeons. In fact one of them, Dr. Foster, is both the chief of plastic surgery and breast reconstruction at UCSF and a respected and familiar colleague of my breast surgeon Dr. Ewing. (Yes, I checked with her.) So I called his office up and got an appointment for a consult with him tomorrow.

I'm trying to go with the mindset that things are happening like this not to frustrate and scare me (though it sure felt like that earlier today), but rather in order to get me to exactly the right person and place at the right time. The serendipity train has already brought me to the UCSF station, so I'm going to stay steady and hope adding this additional UCSF team member will work out just as well if not better than going with the Marin doctor. I'll find out more tomorrow, though. Cross your fingers for me that this is going to work out just as it should.