Skin

About a month ago I went to the dermatologist to have some "Beauty" marks checked out. Not so beautiful. One came back positive for basal cell carcinoma. So yesterday I went back to have the offending spot removed. It was very creepy. I was laid out on the table with a piece of blue tissue over my face, with a hole in it so the doctor could get to my forehead. I was appropriately anesthetized, but I could feel and hear him cutting away. Kind of a gentle crunching sound. I could see blood seeping across the blue tissue so I closed my eyes. Then came the sewing. Five stitches that seemed to take forever, but it was the first one that got to me. When the doctor pulled that first stitch through, I could feel my eyebrows pull closer together.

"Hey, you're not giving me a uni-brow, are you?"

Laughs and giggles from the two nurses, and a reassurance from the doctor that he hadn't sewed my eyebrows together. I do love an audience. In fact, before the doctor even started sewing me up, I heard him say "cauterize". This was the cue for a nurse to turn on some kind of heat gun and aim it at my forehead. Once again, I couldn't resist.

"Is that grilled steak I smell?"

Giggles and a laugh along with the doc informing me that, "Yes, and you're the steak."

When it was all finished and over with, the doctor removed the blue tissue and the nurses proceeded to patch me up with a bandage. The spot that was removed was 0.4cm. A sweet pea is 1cm across, so this was less than half as big across as a sweet pea. Of course going in for this bit of flesh removal I expected maybe a dime sized piece to be removed. When the nurse put a mirror up for me to check out their work, I was kind of surprised. I had a giant patch on my forehead. It looked like I had been hit in the head with a baseball bat. And now that many hours have passed, and all the anesthetic has worn off, it does feel like I was punched very hard in the forehead. In fact, I'm kind of sorry I declined the nice pain killers the doctor had offered to prescribe.