I selected Dr.Garramone for my top surgery (double mastectomy) because I went with my friend when he had his done there and he had great results. Scheduling an appointment was no problem. The staff was very friendly over the phone when arranging everything and then in person.
My wife and I had to wait about 2 hours for our pre-op appointment because apparently all the pre-op patients come in around the same time and Dr.G sees them in the order they arrived. The pre-op appointment was quick since I knew what to expect and didn't have any questions.
The surgery center was great. All the nurses and staff there were fabulous!
A week after the surgery I returned for my post-op appointment. I waited about 45 min to be seen. Dr.G said that everything looked great. He was rushed- he'd had a flat and so was late and there were many patients in line to be seen. He didn't say much else. Just went over the basic care instructions (xeroform, bacitracin, gauze pad, etc...) quickly as he re-covered my nipples. And that was it!
We'd been told, and the after-care instructions said, that the nipples will look ugly and "slough off", but I didn't really know what that meant. There weren't any pictures in the after-care packet, which would be very helpful. So when my nipples started looking gross I tried to just shrug it off as being part of the process. Then, about a week after returning home to Texas, my right nipple (not the areola, the center part) came off with the xeroform! I freaked out!
We called dr.G right away and left a message on his emergency cell. We waited. Then we tried calling the office several times and didn't get an answer. It was a looong afternoon. Finally we got a hold of Dr.G.
I felt like his attitude was that we were bothering him and he wasn't helpful at all. Basically he said, "I'm sorry. well this happens sometimes. Just keep doing what you're doing ". I was worried about a possible infection and asked him if I should see a doctor. Dr. G was like, "yeah. Well, maybe go see your regular doctor tomorrow cause I can't do anything from here". And neither he or even someone from his office ever contacted us again! I had e-mailed pics of my nipples the day before when I was worried about how they looked. Well, he hadn't even seen them. So, I told him about them and that I'd send a pic of the one that had the nipple fall off that day. I thought he'd look at it and let me know what he thought about how it looked, how the other nipple looked, and how the areolas looked (cause at this point I was worried they'd come off too) but I never heard anything from him or his office again!
I ended up having to find a plastic surgeon near where I live (who also does top surgery, but I didn't know of before). This surgeon took me on as an after-care patient. He gave me a completely different set of care instructions and wrote several prescriptions for things to help with healing and reduce scarring. Following these new after-care instructions, my nipples improved greatly within a couple of days!
Dr. G is an excellent surgeon, just make sure you don't have any questions and nothing goes wrong because his patient care just sucked.