Today was Moh's procedure #3. After hearing the doctor talk a bit about which spot we were going to tackle, it quickly dawned on me that I may not even be halfway through yet. I only have three more appointments scheduled but I'm getting the feeling that I might need 5-6 more and perhaps we just haven't gotten around to scheduling them all yet.
We opted to do one of two spots that are on the front of my head, the ones that are clearly visible to the outside world. She decided to do the less noticeable of the two simply because it was an older spot versus the newer, more visible one. A little shocking to me was that the injections hurt way more up there than they did on either the nose or the ear. I'm still a little confused as to why.
The actual procedure was fairly quick, easy, and uneventful. Once again, it took 2 passes to get all the cancer out (I'm on a roll with this 2 pass thing), and as always it's the closing of the wound that's the most time consuming and unusual feeling.
Today, though, I had the added bonus of having my ear evaluated, basically what they had worked on last week. The question had been worrying me all week in regards to whether the graft was taking or not. I had read some horror stories online and I think I was more or less freaking myself out. The doctor said today that a graft failing on your ear is fairly rare but then again I tend to have negative "luck" on my side usually.
It turned out that the graft looked good overall. My doctor likes to say "looks amazing!" when something looks, well, like work that she can be very proud of. In regards to my ear, though, she said, "It looks really good." I promptly asked, "So...not amazing?" She thought about it, hesitated, and then said, "No, it's amazing. Yes, yes, amazing". I guess we'll see.
In any event, she removed the bolster or "pumpkin" as she calls it which is basically the small sponge looking thing that was sewn to my ear and basically held the graft in place. Getting these stitches removed was not the greatest, in fact I'd say this was the worst part so far. I don't know, maybe I'm just a baby about my ear in general but I was both humming, silently cursing, and most definitely squirming. When she was done, she said, "Okay, I've removed the graft..." I think I gulped out loud upon hearing this. "No, no, sorry, I meant the bolster! Hah, hah." Yep, very funny indeed.
Well, 3 down and who knows how many more to go. It's starting to feel a bit old hat, though, which is kind of scary. They also said that maybe I can get back to both riding my bike and wearing headphones fairly soon. Ah, wouldn't that be nice. Meanwhile, please don't mind the hole in my head.
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