Chandler S Cortina, MD, MS, FSSO, FACS

Dr. Cortina showed up at my first -and last- appointment with him extremely unprepared, having barely read my chart and only having looked at my initial needle biopsy results and not the final pathology after mastectomy. As such, there was much to go over with him, which he was extremely impatient with, having expected my long and complicated breast cancer and treatment consideration history to be simple and short. I hadn’t even expected to discuss medical oncology, but he was missing that info along with basic cancer specs such as the grade. He looked downright bored when I answered his questions, at one point even setting his pen down and crossing his arms. His demeanor made it hard for me to continue, especially being autistic, yet he kept interrupting me to tell me to “focus” when I was doing nothing but that and he was not. I kept apologizing that there was so much information, but he got increasingly annoyed and hostile and started arguing wrongly about what I had said and not… said and what was in my chart and ended my appointment without doing an exam. I had new axillary concerns I didn’t get to share, which progressed thereafter. Worst of all, when I simply stood and questioned the canceling, he invoked a trauma that both I and my referring doctor had shared with him, yelling “call security” down the hallway (security had been placed outside the door at another oncology unit when I attempted to learn the identity of an unaccounted for mass that was deemed suspicious and labeled “#2” going into surgery). He went on to omit this from his charted note and claimed I was sharing “all of my medical conditions” and not just breast cancer and conditions directly related to it and its treatment (particularly contraindications for tamoxifen). I only saw him because he was highly recommended to me by a transgender woman PCP at Froedert based on his ongoing research on transmasculine people with breast cancer. Unfortunately, being trans-friendly does not mean pro-neurodiversity, honest, attentive, or decent human.