28th
Up until today, I’ve had this thing on my back that I thought was some sort of raised scar. I say “this thing” and it makes me think of some really big thing…but we’re talking about something about the size of a dime. Okay, maybe a nickel. It had been there for years and my primary physician had long ago pronounced it benign but I finally decided to see a dermatologist about it. Turns out it was a seborrheic keratoses. Because of its placement (near my bra strap), she thought it best to cut it off. “Now?” I screeched. “If you have the time,” she responded calmly.
It really wasn’t that bad. She tried to distract me with conversation while she punched me with a number of stinging needles to numb the area. (I’ll take stinging over searing pain from a scalpel any day.) Then she proceeded to painlessly cut it off. “Now,” she said, “I’m just going to cauterize it to stop the bleeding. That smell is just a bit of burning flesh.” Hello, lady, I wanted to shout, it’s MY burning flesh! And in my mind it was not “just a bit”. Doctors always quantify things based on their own experience. Trust me, any hint of burning flesh is way more than I experience in a day. Or a decade.
That was five hours ago so I’m sure whatever pain killer she injected is gone and it feels fine. However, I’m supposed to apply ointment and change the band-aid once a day for the next week. Since it’s on my back left, lowish, shoulder, that’s going to be near impossible to do on my own. Guess I’ll have to get creative or depend on the kindness of strangers, er, neighbors, for the next few days.
