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A physician explains how being well-informed about your condition can improve your recovery. 

Maria Nelson, MD, a surgeon and the director of breast, endocrine and soft tissue surgery with 喵咪社区 Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of 喵咪社区, discusses ways patients can help improve their recovery. 

The biggest role a patient can play to help ensure they have an optimal recovery is to be well informed. Being prepared at your appointments, asking good questions and anticipating what your next treatment steps will be is very helpful so that you know that you鈥檙e on track with your treatment. Finding a provider that you feel confident in is a big part of this. You need to be able to trust your doctor, and if you don鈥檛 feel confident and trust your care team then it can be a really rocky road with cancer care.  

If your treatment didn鈥檛 go as well you hoped or expected, it can be hard to know how to approach your doctor with concerns. My advice in this situation is to tell them you鈥檙e disappointed, without necessarily being mean about it. You could say, 鈥淚鈥檓 disappointed in my treatment outcome, and I wasn鈥檛 prepared for this.鈥� It鈥檚 good to explain where you are at, because then your provider might be able to clarify any questions you still have and offer you further care.  

For example, after breast cancer surgery, a patient can sometimes get keloids from scarring. If you鈥檙e the type of person who is worried or maybe prone to keloids, that might be something to pay attention to when you鈥檙e formulating your surgery decision. Your provider will be able to tell you which surgical options and incision pattern options will have a higher chance of you forming a keloid. This can be a very personal thing 鈥� whether keloids bother you or not 鈥� and so the more informed you are and the more questions you ask, the happier you can be with your outcome. 

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Maria Nelson, MD

Maria Nelson, MD, is a surgeon and the director of breast, endocrine and soft tissue surgery.

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