Dermatology doubleheader and alphabet soup

A post from a year ago, A Little More Pain Today, came up on Facebook with a photo of me standing right near where I'm sitting at Diane and David's house in Newton waiting for more pain to be inflicted on my face this afternoon.

The funny thing is, I do not remember what it was. They all blur together.

The theme for this week is alphabet soup, ECP and PDT.

Internal sunburn yesterday, external today.

ECP: Extracorporeal photopheresis, what I refer to as the blood therapy or sometimes the blood thing, for my graft vs. host of the skin. I talked to another relatively new (to me) doctor yesterday, our second meeting. Sometimes they don't know what to make of me. I said I had played tennis that morning and over the weekend ran (or whatever you would call it) a 10-K race.

It is so much better with the angio needle. I was even able to get up and go to the bathroom without worry of it infiltrating. A new nurse (who had come over from Mass General) took care of me. He was a character, telling me it was his first time but he would try to do a good job. I don't remember exactly what I said but I gave it back to him.

"Like returning a slice with a slice," I said.

Today, PDT, or photodynamic therapy, to remove precancerous cells and any tiny cancers from my neck and face: "a treatment that uses a drug, called a photosensitizer or photosensitizing agent, and a particular type of light. When photosensitizers are exposed to a specific wavelength of light, they produce a form of oxygen that kills nearby cells."

This hurts a lot. I don't know why people do this sort of thing cosmetically. You hold a tiny blower in your hand and move it around while you feel like you're getting the worst sunburn ever. I can't remember the exact time. Maybe 16 minutes. Maybe I should imagine that it is wind blowing on a beach.

Oh and I might also get a biopsy on a weird spot on my calf. Just as the one on my ankle has healed nicely.

Then back home around four. Nothing much tomorrow because I will be carless. That squeaking sound turned out to be a call for new rear brakes. Better write up a storm to cover that.

In between, a good dinner with Diane last night and upcoming brunch this morning with Rook, who is going to be kind enough to drop me at the dermatologist's office in Brookline.

The procedures will not be fun but it's always nice to see my primary dermatologist, Jennifer Lin, who will weigh in on how she thinks the ECP is going. She's the one who used to talk to me about dating. While freezing spots off my skin. Now she is happily married and a new mother. I assume she will ask about me. I'll have to think about which stories to tell her this time. Or not.