This Was NOT On My List of Summer Plans

 If you don't like looking at surgery pictures, then you better bypass this blog!  The girls and I used to have a saying when we were doing scrapbooking - if it wasn't in the scrapbook, it didn't happen!  Now that I only blog (in lieu of scrapbooking), THIS happened so I must blog about it!!  (As if I'd ever forget!!!)

I go yearly to a dermatologist  - and I never miss an appointment!  I had noticed last November that a freckle appeared on my nose - kind of strange - but I really didn't give it another thought until I went to Dr Marcus in Jan., before our Mexico trip.  She of course looked at it very closely and said it looked OK to her but she wanted to see me after Mexico so she could check it again.

After we returned, I saw her and this time she said it looked OK but she wasn't comfortable with it so decided to do a biopsy - sure enough it came back as a melanoma and needed to be removed.  Because it was on the nose, Dr Marcus said I would probably have to see a plastic surgeon after the surgery.  I was sent to the surgeon (whom had removed one on my leg almost 10 years ago) and then to a consultation with the plastic surgeon.

On June 28th I had the surgery on my face - it was Mohs Surgery which basically means that the surgeon does NOT close the wound but just bandages it up - sends the deepest cells to the lab (to make sure he went deep enough) - and then you wait for a phone call the next morning to see if you're going BACK to the surgeon OR to the plastic surgeon.

The surgery went fine although he told me he did go pretty deep - lovely!  I went home looking like this.

I had strict instructions to do NOTHING so that's what I did - it was hard to see out of my glasses anyway as you can see they are perched high on my nose!  The pain was very manageable so I just took tylenol - it was a little hard to sleep with all that bandage on my nose.

I waited impatiently the next morning for my phone call - and FINALLY ended up calling for the results - they said they would call me back and soon the plastic surgeon office called and said all was good.  EXCEPT the hole was too deep to do in the office and he needed to do it at the surgery center (which I was warned about in advance).  BUT he wanted me to come in a couple of hours - and I had already eaten a full breakfast (no eating if you're having surgery) AND the surgery center wouldn't admit me unless I had a covid test!!!  After discussing it with the dr, he said he could do it in the office but it would take longer than expected.

So we headed down to his office in Co. Springs - and I was in the chair for an hour and a half.  I stopped counting the shots in my face after 10 of them - painful????  OMG - it hurt! And of course I'm awake although I always think of myself as having a pretty high pain tolerance!  It was so hard to relax - and  after awhile my back started hurting and it was hard to move with him working on my face!

I felt the dr was VERY rough on my face - but I had no one to compare him to AND I've never had work done to my face.  It just felt like he was pushing into my eye sockets and of course his fingers would be up my nose - not a fun experience!  I flinched once and he asked me if it hurt and I said yes - and then he started the shots again - believe me I did NOT flinch any more - those darn shots hurt!

FINALLY I was done - I had NO idea what I would look like and Glenn looked a little shocked when I walked out - got my instructions and we headed home - an hour away.....  The one thing I had forgotten to do was to bring my pain meds (which I had filled in advance) in the car.  By the time we got home, I was hurting so bad that I broke down and cried and cried - it was so painful!  But I got the drugs down me and soon they took effect.  Here's what I looked like when I came home.

After I got settled on the recliner, Glenn told me he had been having chest pains all morning and really thought he should go to the ER but didn't want to leave me - oh my - when it rains, it pours!!!  I told him I would be fine but he wasn't comfortable leaving me so walked over to the neighbors and asked our friend if she would check on me a couple of times as he figured he would be admitted to the hospital.  He headed into Woodland Park ER and they monitored him for awhile and indeed sent him down to the hospital in Co. Springs via an ambulance.

In the meantime, our neighbor checked on me - and after I had texted the girls (they were all  in NE for their dad's 70th birthday celebration) Jaime got ahold of Rayna (our granddaughter) and told her to come up and stay with me.  She stopped in to see Glenn before they transferred him and then came to our house to spend the night with me!  I didn't think I needed her but it was sure nice to have her wake me up twice during the night to take my meds!!!

I felt a little better the next morning so sent Rayna on her way!  I spent the day in the recliner on my meds and got updates from Glenn.  They really didn't find anything wrong with him after several tests so changed his medication and sent him home!

Here's my day after photo.  It was hard to see out of my one eye as it was almost swollen shut!  And it hurt too bad to wear my glasses as they rested right on the stitches (Rayna counted 25 of those stitches since she cleaned them for me)

Glenn got home - I stopped the pain meds after 2 days and actually felt pretty darn good considering!!  But then the bruising started and I looked like I had been in a fight!!

But I continued to heal well and this is the picture a week later before I got my stitches out!

I'm looking SO much better now - the bruises under my eyes are almost gone - the swelling on my nose has been going down so it's almost back to normal.  And just a couple of light bruises under my eyes are still there!  I massage my scar 5 times a day to keep scar tissue from forming and will go back to the plastic surgeon the first week of August!

What an ordeal!  I've always been careful about using sunscreen but now I will have to be SUPER careful when I'm out in the sun!  I'm paying a price for all those early teen years of lying in the sun day after day before we knew how dangerous the sun can be to our skin!