It was filler. And as I've posted before (ad nauseum), the sole purpose seemed to be to allow Puzo to describe Lucy's operation. Evidently a woman he knew had the operation, and Puzo interested himself in it. He was unable to resist passing his knowledge along to us. I don't know what was more annoying--having to wade through all that Lucy-and-Jules crap, or knowing that the only reason they were in the novel was to serve as his vehicle for giving us a lesson in female surgery.

One of the reasons that the movie version of "The Last Don" was so much better than the novel was that the movie minimized all that Hollywood BS that Puzo put in the book. Ohh, how boring!