The Nose Knows

I received a phone call yesterday afternoon where the voice on the other end said, "You're in luck!  We had a cancellation tomorrow and so you can come in tomorrow for your first procedure."  The 'first procedure' in question is the first of probably eight Mohs procedures, basically to remove the small skin cancer bumps off of my head and face.  I particularly found the "...you're in luck..." part interesting because I frequently say that I'm the unluckiest person on Earth, meaning I never win anything.  It seems about the only thing I can "win" is an earlier appointment for removing half of my nose.

Well, okay, that's a slight exaggeration, really, but they did want to start with the bump on my nose.  After a series of long discussions on that phone call, most of which I was very reluctant to bump up the appointment date, the doctor herself finally called me and more or less strong armed me into it.  And so, I went to sleep last night with mild anxiety, not sleeping much at all, mentally preparing for this appointment today where they'd start hacking at my nose.

I now sit here typing with an extremely large bandage across my nose and the front of my face.  The numbness wore off about two hours ago and I was slightly shocked to see just how much this wound actually hurt.  I've never had a broken nose but I can only imagine that it feels rather similar.  It kind of feels like someone went over my nose with a large cheese grater about 25 times.  I'm apparently going to have some sort of line on my nose as well, basically the scar, and the doctor also said "your nose will be thinner looking".  I never thought of myself as a fat nosed individual, mind you, but I got her point.  I'm sort of wondering if I'm now going to have a crooked nose, ala Owen Wilson?  It would be cool if it would always point, say, north, or something special like that but that's probably too much to ask.

I also can't decide if I look more like Humphrey Bogart in "Dark Passage", right after the guy breaks his nose in order to have it set in an unrecognizable manner since he's running from the cops, or Marcia Brady just after the football hit her in the face.  Either way, I guess my nose will now be different going forward.  I'm thinking I should have taken more pictures of it along the way.  Heck, I'm already missing my old nose.

I can now also say, not proudly, really, that I've had the experience of multiple needles in my nose and my eye.  Next up, will be the cells on my ear.  Sigh.  Getting old is hell.  Strangely, all I could think about as they were hacking and sewing my nose today was the scene at the end of "Sleeper", where Woody Allen has stolen the leaders nose and is threatening to shoot it with a gun.

On the music front, my mixes from last weekend do in fact sound much better, and I was super pleased to hear that the live basement tracks sound quite wonderful through the stereo.  I think we'll be seeing a release of these fairly soon.  See?  At least there's some good news.  Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face...