Today I finally had the surgery to remove my skin cancer, along with plastic surgery that will ostensibly result in a much better cosmetic result (eventually). When my youngest daughter got home from daycare this afternoon she took one look at me, her eyes went wide as saucers, and she burst into tears. Great...I've got a face that scares little kids now.
Here's an advertisement for the importance of wearing sunscreen (I can hardly wait to see what's under all those bandages tomorrow when I have to change my dressing for the first time...all the swelling from my lower right eyelid down to my lips leads me to believe it isn't going to be pretty...):
Wednesday, May 9th:
And here I am the next morning. The scar that would have been left by the cancer removal would likely have been about the size of my pinky fingernail. The dermatologist who did the surgery decided that would be unsightly, and instead decided to "hide" the scar by folding it into an inch and a half long incision along the side of my nose. I honestly didn't know beforehand that plastic surgery was going to be involved, because I am not sure I'm happy about it. There are over 30 stitches in there (half are under the skin, holding the muscle layers together). The big brown spot on the end of my nose is where the surgeon removed a benign growth of blood vessels all clumped together (the full name of it escapes me, but I recall it involves the word "aneuristic"). Whatever they did during the surgery seems to have set a bunch of nerves on fire...the nerves at the back of my throat and top of my palate seem to be involved and it totally hurts to swallow or eat anything. In short, I am grouchy and miserable this morning.
The picture captures the fact that I look really wan and awful (I hardly slept last night), but doesn't really capture my black eye and the bruising and swelling all over my cheek.
Feel free to show these pictures to recalcitrant kids who refuse to wear sunscreen. Cancer of any kind doesn't run in my family, so this should be a warning to all that skin cancer can happen to anyone, even at a young age; the results of tanning...it's so glamorous...
