I truly cannot recommend Dr. Hartog. This review is long overdue, and my experience has stayed on my mind for years. I received a breast augmentation in 2012 from Dr. Hartog. I chose him because my mom had gone the year prior for a different procedure and she had a great experience. Even more so, I was so excited for the surgery, I was not as picky as I should have been. The initial appointment was fine, as others have said his bedside manner isn't great. The appointment lasted less than 5 minutes with him and he briefly looked at me, scribbled some notes, recommended 300cc and left. A few weeks later, I came back for the actual fitting. Dr. Hartog was not present at the appointment. It was a young woman who was very friendly.
I'm a tall girl, and while I was slender at the time, it was apparent in the fitting that 300cc would not give me the desired result. I asked the woman if 375cc would be okay and she assured me it'd be fine, even exclaimed that she had much larger implants herself. I did their imaging thing, and again, 300cc just looked much too small, so she put me down for 375cc. She assured myself AND my conservative mother that it wouldn't be an issue.
The day of surgery was the next time I saw Dr. Hartog. I was understandably nervous. He came in when it was time for my pre-op photos to be taken. He remarked something snakily to the effect of "oh, I see you went larger than my recommendation" and I said "the woman at the fitting said it was okay, is it okay?" and he responded something like "I don't know, I guess we will find out"!?!?. As if he was annoyed that I didn't follow his recommendation. A few problems here: should the doctor not be reviewing patients size decisions BEFORE they are going back for surgery to discuss with them? The office could have called me a week before and asked me to come back in if there was an issue. Second off, you really shouldn't be making unsettling comments to patients before they go under the knife like that. I was truly shocked, but at only 20 years old, and eager to have the surgery I tried my best to shrug it off.
The real issue was when I was woken up for surgery. Someone messed up, REALLY messed up, and I was not given any kind of pain medication before waking up. I've had anesthesia since this surgery and I can confidently say, this was NOT simply a bad reaction to anesthesia. This was waking up from surgery with no pain meds at all. The pain was unimaginable, and nothing like I have ever experienced in my life. I couldn't hardly breath and thought I was going to puke/pass out. The nurse told me to take one of my pain pills that I'd been prescribed?? Really?? And they honestly got me out of there as quickly as possible, probably because I was in an absolute panic. I sobbed the whole way home, shaking in shock and in excruciating pain. Within an hour though, the pain medicine had kicked in and I was honestly pretty comfortable throughout the remainder of the healing, ya know once I had pain medication in my system. However spending an hour in the WORST pain of my life was cruel, unnecessary and avoidable. I have never talked to anyone else who has experienced that level of pain when immediately waking up.
I was extremely young, naive and just happy to have boobs finally. Going back, I would absolutely have gone to a different doctor. I don't know who messed up and allowed me to be woken up without pain meds, but the negligence is incredibly disturbing looking back. It is absolutely not normal to awake from surgery and find yourself at a 10/10 from the pain. While my results are adequate (not amazing), the experience was horrendous. I only went back for one follow up appointment right after the surgery because I felt obligated to. Do yourself a favor and go somewhere else where the doctor really cares and wouldn't treat a patient like this. read more