Is That a Hole in Your Head…

Or are you just happy to see me?

Okay, here’s the whole story.

Xena, a wise and wonderful friend who insisted on driving me to my appointment, showed up at my place at three yesterday afternoon. After a quick trip to TCC - I to drop off final grades and she to deliver her contracts for next term - we hit the road for the doctor’s office.

Of course, we end up sitting in traffic MILES away from the hospital because of an accident on the ONLY bridge between here and there. The accident was in the other direction, but did that matter to the bozos in our lanes? NO! Traffic was backed up for a good long way and I ended up calling the doctor’s office to let them know that I was still coming, but that I’d likely be late. Once we cleared the accident (it was a doozie, too - three cars, one facing the wrong way and one wedged under another with the airbag obviously deployed), it was pretty easy sailing the rest of the way.

I arrived at the office, filled out a small book’s worth of paperwork, and was taken directly in to an office. The doctor showed up pretty much right away, introduced herself as Molly - she looked more like a Katherine to me, but whatever - and had a look at my head. She said that this was certainly something she could do in the office right now; in fact, she said, mine would be the third sebaceous cyst she’d excised today. I asked her to please make sure that none of my grad school fell out - that shit was expensive and I’d like to not have to go back to restock. She laughed at that and said that she couldn’t promise I wouldn’t forget a phone number or two, but that she was pretty sure my grad school was safe. That she had a sense of humor actually made me feel a little bit better, but not much.

I warned the doctor before she started that I don’t respond well to anything with “caine” in its name - lidocaine, novacaine, that sort of thing. I stump my dentist every time he has to give me a quadruple-dose of novacaine before he can get any work started (and that’s on top of the tranquilizers he gives me, which I was really jonesing for at that moment). Molly said that was fine, that she’d give me a good dose of the stuff, and we’d get started.

I managed to numb up enough for the procedure to begin, but about five minutes into it, I was feeling a lot of pain. “Really?” the doctor said. Clearly she thought I was exaggerating when I told her of my tolerance for numbing drugs. She shot me up again - ouch! - and started back at it. This happened a total of four times - FOUR times - before the nearly hour-long procedure was through. I likely had enough lidocaine in me to fell a St. Bernard, but I felt every single one of the four stitches when we were all done.

The nurse told me, when I called yesterday afternoon, that the lidocaine would be the worst part of the procedure. She was wrong. The lidocaine wasn’t fun, certainly, but the worst part by far was that I was able to hear, both internally and externally, all the snipping and cutting. I still shudder to think of it. I would have been much happier to have plugged in my iPod and had that to focus on, rather than hearing what sounded not unlike chicken being split with kitchen shears for the better part of half an hour. It seems that, at some point in its history, the cyst had ruptured (whatever that means), so it didn’t come out as one clean lump but rather had to be cut and removed in pieces. This required lots of tugging and snipping, and I felt - and heard - ever single bit of it. I tried very hard to focus on breathing around all 108 of my mala beads, and that helped, certainly, but it wasn’t quite enough. Bleah.

Molly finished, slathered me up with antibacterial ointment and slapped a band-aid on me (though, sadly, not the cute little Hello Kitty band-aids I bought for the purpose. I should have thought to bring one with me). I’m under orders to keep the band-aid on for 24 hours, but that I can remove it tonight and clean the wound, re-goop it with anti-bac. and put my cute band-aids on. I get to shower tomorrow.

The doctor usually sends patients home with orders to ice the area and take plenty of ibuprofen to reduce swelling (Michael commented that I shouldn’t let them kiss me off with just Tylenol - how wise my friends are!), but she sent me home with a prescription for Darvocet. I took one on the way home (yet another reason I was grateful to Xena for driving) and one before bed, and I still woke up at three in the morning in pain. I’ve got some pretty significant swelling (at least, *I* think it’s significant), and I feel like crap. At least I look a whole hell of a lot better than I feel.

This sucks.

The mass was sent for pathology, but I’m not even a tiny bit concerned that it’s going to come back bad. I go back to the office on Tuesday to have the stitches out and to be reassessed, but I’m sure that everything is going to be fine. I’m so profoundly glad that it’s over.  I’m going to be spending a significant portion of today doing absolutely nothing that doesn’t involve the couch and the t.v. and a good part of the next few days trying to purge the memory of the sound of all that snipping.

Thank you all so much for your love and good vibes. I’m keeping my reception channel open.