the aftermath

Now that it’s over I don’t mind talking about it, and I don’t even have to anthropomorphize the little bugger. Scotty, my ass, it was squamous cell carcinoma. Not as common a skin cancer as basal cell, but not as bad as a melanoma.
Here is what I thought would happen: I would go to the doctor’s office and get one local anasthetic injection, the doctor would remove the tiny bump and investigate it, he might have to go back in and take away an itsy-bitsy bit more, and then he’d close up the wound with maybe a couple of stitches and put a band-aid over it. In other words, nothing much more than the biopsy procedure, except they were going to get rid of the whole thing. The wound might be bigger than the biopsy wound so I’d have to use a regular band-aid instead of the little round kind. I would have to take some annoying painkillers for a day or two that would make me groggy, I’d sleep a lot, and then I’d be fine by the end of the weekend. I might not be able to work out that weekend, but I could stay home and spend my days watching movies on DVD.

Here is what actually happened: I went to the doctor’s office and got local after local after local all afternoon as we went from one stage of the procedure to another. The local is the most awful part, as you know if you’ve ever had to have your actual face (not your mouth) numbed. The rest of the procedure was easy for me. The doctor warned me that since the wound would be on the side of my nose, that he would have to create a flap and pull down skin from a stretchier area to close it, because the skin on my nose just isn’t very stretchy. (At one point he said they might have to use skin from behind my ear, which really freaked me out, but fortunately that wasn’t necessary.)
I didn’t see what the results of the procedure looked like, because they packed everything in a giant gob of gauze that they taped to my face in order to give the wound lots of pressure. I couldn’t remove the dressing for 24 hours, during which time I couldn’t shower, either.
I got a prescription for an antibiotic and for painkillers that turned out to be the same old stuff I take for tension headaches. Even the same dosage. An old friend, really. I was happy about that, because I hate drugs that make me feel groggy and sleepy and dull.
My boyfriend took me to the grocery store where I get prescriptions filled. People stared. I was tempted to wave a finger at one staring child and tell him, “You see what happens when you don’t wear sunscreen?” but I decided to behave. (Besides, the doctor told me that the particular type and size of carcinoma I had was probably hereditary more than anything.)
After the first day, the thing didn’t hurt much. Sinus headaches hurt a lot more. Still, I felt rotten and out-of-sorts on Friday and I couldn’t focus enough to watch a whole movie. Too bad, because we had a stack of rentals and newly purchased DVDs for me to view.
I didn’t expect the long list of “don’ts” from the doctor. Don’t work out for at least seven days. Don’t do anything where you might exert yourself, it can cause the wound to swell or reopen. Don’t lower your head in any way. Don’t spend too much time on the computer, you might be lowering your head without realizing it. Don’t work outside in the yard. Don’t do laundry for a few days (you have to stoop to use the dryer).
I couldn’t shave my legs, clean the bathtub so I could take a hot bath, clean the house in any way while I was stuck at home, load or unload the dishwasher, and certainly not wash the car. I couldn’t drive because I need to wear glasses to drive and my glasses couldn’t fit over my big swollen-up nose.
Not only was my nose swollen, but my left eye was swollen half-closed. I spent Friday feeling like the Elephant Man. (And, of course, having music from The Tall Guy in my head: “Take a deep breath, prepare for the worst …”)
The nastiest surprise occurred on Friday afternoon when I could finally remove the huge wad of gauze dressing from my face. I was stunned. The line of stitches ran all the way from the top of my nose, near the bridge, to the bottom, next to the nostril. It was a crooked J shape, or maybe a shaky S. I understood the whole “flap” principle a lot better once I saw the line of stitches, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it. Instead of normal sized band-aids, I have had to cover it all with bulky bandage squares, which I have to trim to fit.
No matter where and how I trim the stupid bandage squares, or even the oversized band-aids I bought over the weekend, they still obscure the line of vision in my left eye, and my eyelashes hit the bandage when I blink. This is incredibly annoying.
In fact, everything since the actual procedure has been annoying rather than painful. The wound doesn’t hurt, but it looks ugly—I don’t want my boyfriend to see it—and it’s a bitch to keep clean. The big bandages bug me and make it difficult for me to fall asleep. I can only sleep on one side, which makes my ear hurt. Little things. Dumb things. I remind myself it could be a whole, whole lot worse, but I still get irritated.
I was most irritated about having to go back to work on Monday with a big-ass bandage covering most of my nose. I knew people were going to ask intrusive questions. Not the other tech writers, maybe not the guys in my product group, but you know every office has a few obnoxious clueless people who can’t mind their own business, or even well-meaning nice people who would consider those questions to be part of normal conversation.
I entertained myself by thinking of creative responses to the question “What happened to your nose?” I gave myself extra points for movie-related answers. Here are some of the ones I came up with:

• “Those damn Brady kids.”
• “My complication had a complication.” (Mrs. Terrain, in Brazil)
• “Chinatown.” (Alternative: “Roman Polanski did it.”)
• “Toontown.” (I was getting a bit punchy.)
• “It’s sensitive to questions.” (Yes, this is paraphrased from a very well-known movie.)
• “There is no spoon.” (A friend suggested this as the perfect non sequitur.)

Fortunately, hardly anyone asked. I felt less self-conscious once I realized that most of my coworkers are too polite to ask (or maybe they were secretly thinking of terrible scenarios and didn’t want to ask). When someone I didn’t know well did ask, I mumbled something vague about going to the doctor’s office to have something taken care of. Which was fine.
After I get the stitches out tomorrow, I am hoping I can switch to using a couple of regular-sized band-aids on the whole thing instead of these bulky bandages from hell. I’m also hoping I can go back to the gym on Saturday, taking a fairly easy class, but we’ll see.
Meanwhile, my boyfriend has been a saint throughout the entire thing, letting me eat all the ice cream and pick what to watch on TV, doing all the necessary housework, getting meals for me, and telling me that yes, I am paranoid and it is not infected and I should chill. This would have been immensely difficult to deal with by myself.
This was all probably more than you wanted to know about the whole thing, wasn’t it. At least you can be glad I didn’t post photos.