Not Quite as Cute
With all the cute pictures we post here, I thought I'd mix in something not so cute to balance things out a bit.
You know when your Mom always tells you to wear sunscreen or you're gonna get skin cancer? Well, apparently, she was right. For a number of years, I've had this small red spot above my upper lip. It really never bothered me and I wasn't sure how long it had been there, but I decided to have the doctor check it out a few weeks back. To make a long story short, it turned out to be a Basal Cell Carcinoma. Skin cancer. Ugh.
What do you do about that? You have it removed. With a sharp knife. They do a procedure called Mohs Surgery that basically involves cutting out a chunk, inspecting the margins under a microscope, and then cutting out more in the areas that still have cancer cells. Repeat as necessary. They told me it would take 2 to 3 repetitions usually to get all of the cancer. Each repetition takes about 10 minutes of surgery and about a hour of waiting (they bandage you up and you sit in the waiting room).
After they're done with all that, they do some more cutting so they can minimize the scar. You might think that more cutting sounds like a bad plan to minimize scarring, but Mohs surgeons are trained in both the cancer removal techniques and reconstruction techniques. So it's basically like they tack on a little plastic surgery as a bonus at the end. How nice. (My procedure was very much like the one shown here, except that it was on my top lip, so this is upside down.)
As it turns out, I was fairly lucky and they got all the cancer on the first pass. I was only at the doctor for about 2 hours for the whole thing. This procedure is 99.2% effective at completely removing this type of cancer, so I should be in good shape.
Here's what I looked like before (notice the small red area on my left upper lip):
And here's what I look like after (notice the huge gaping wound that's been sewn together on my upper left lip):
You know when your Mom always tells you to wear sunscreen or you're gonna get skin cancer? Well, apparently, she was right. For a number of years, I've had this small red spot above my upper lip. It really never bothered me and I wasn't sure how long it had been there, but I decided to have the doctor check it out a few weeks back. To make a long story short, it turned out to be a Basal Cell Carcinoma. Skin cancer. Ugh.
What do you do about that? You have it removed. With a sharp knife. They do a procedure called Mohs Surgery that basically involves cutting out a chunk, inspecting the margins under a microscope, and then cutting out more in the areas that still have cancer cells. Repeat as necessary. They told me it would take 2 to 3 repetitions usually to get all of the cancer. Each repetition takes about 10 minutes of surgery and about a hour of waiting (they bandage you up and you sit in the waiting room).
After they're done with all that, they do some more cutting so they can minimize the scar. You might think that more cutting sounds like a bad plan to minimize scarring, but Mohs surgeons are trained in both the cancer removal techniques and reconstruction techniques. So it's basically like they tack on a little plastic surgery as a bonus at the end. How nice. (My procedure was very much like the one shown here, except that it was on my top lip, so this is upside down.)
As it turns out, I was fairly lucky and they got all the cancer on the first pass. I was only at the doctor for about 2 hours for the whole thing. This procedure is 99.2% effective at completely removing this type of cancer, so I should be in good shape.
Here's what I looked like before (notice the small red area on my left upper lip):
And here's what I look like after (notice the huge gaping wound that's been sewn together on my upper left lip):
