Ear today, pain tomorrow

Glad that the procedure is over 

Yesterday I had another Mohs surgery, this one to remove a basal cell carcinoma from an inside part of my ear. It is the area above your earlobe, the little bowl that your finger might inadvertently scratch. I wasn't sure what it was called until the nurse  at Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital said it was the concha.

I was surprised to get a skin cancer there, but they said it is not unusual. I've had so many Mohs that I lost track. This one made me more worried, due to the anticipated pain and weirdness of having a needle stuck into an area with so little skin.

The resident who helped on my intake said that Dr. Schmults has her ways of relaxing patients.  He looked around the exam room and waved his hand and said "this is part of it." He was talking about the classical music playing. It was indeed beautiful and relaxing.

She started out by zapping some pre-cancerous thingies on my neck and hands. She also said to apply Effudex to a spot on my nose, and to do it for a month. It's going to turn my nose red, so maybe I can entertain some children.

When the time came,  the doctor covered my head with a sterile cloth.  Her application of the lidocaine was nothing to have worried about. She did little staccoto pricks that I could barely feel. I heard scraping and felt the pressure but no pain. We even chatted while she worked, and we came up with a potential story idea. She took my email and said she would send me info on a doctor who might make a good story.  She laughed that we were multi-tasking.

Then I waited about 45 minutes while she checked the tissue under a microscope to see if all the margins were clear. Knowing about this waiting period, I had brought two New Yorkers. But the nurse and I talked almost the whole time.

It turns out there was a little bit still left. So this time the nurse numbed me up and the doctor went in and chipped away some cartilage. It took a long time for the nurse to pack the ear up. The good news is that I got a steristrip instead of stitches, so I won't have to take much time up for tennis. In a few days the big bandage can be removed.

Dr. Schmults gave me a prescription for Tyelonol #3 with codeine.  With a craving for a good reuben sandwich, I asked the friend who drove me if he wanted to go to Zaftigs Delicatessen. I also wanted to see my old block, nearby on Babcock Street. We had some good times in that Victorian house, notably group dinners on an old ping pong table in the dining room, running with house friends the short distance to the Charles River path and then running some more, going to Red Sox games, sunbathing on the roof, making new friends, having long discussions.

Old homestead where I lived when in grad school

For some reason when I give a plant a haircut my mind often turns to one of them, He had a big sunny room and many plants that he seemed to be always cutting back. He was quite the ladies' man. Sadly, when I bumped into one of those old roommates in the strangest place – the Kraft Family Blood Door Center – I learned that our friend had died.

My ear didn't immediately hurt. But when the numbing medicine wore off, it was a different story. It felt like a fiery rod was piercing into my brain. I took the Tylenol/Codeine and 10 mgs of oxycodone. The pain resolved, but over a period of a few hours, my skin began to itch. I looked it up and saw that itchy skin can be a side effect of codeine. So I took a Benadryl. The itch subsided, but I tossed and turned all night.

This morning, it took so long to wake up that it was afternoon before I could even function.