Non-cancerous Blog Post

On Wednesday I went to see my dermatologist for a follow up visit. He had done a biopsy on a red spot on my forehead that was looking forebodingly like some kind of non-malignant skin cancer. It was acting just like the spot I had on the side of my face two years ago that did turn out to be skin cancer. But the good news is that this time around, it was totally benign--not even pre-cancerous! Whoopee! Now I don’t have to worry about having them carve out a chunk of my forehead leaving me with a big Frankenstein scar right in the middle of my face. I'm actually rather partial to the inch-long scar on my left jaw from my last bout with basal-cell carcinoma--I try to pass it off as a relic from a knife fight with pirates. But having a scar right smack between the eyes would not be as fun. Nothing glamorous about that. I’m relieved as can be that all I have to do now is wait and see if it will go away by itself, which the doctor told me should happen.

What I have on my forehead is a keratosis, which I’ve already had a few of in other places, but they looked totally different than this one. Evidently I’m maddeningly susceptible to the keratosis thingies. The other ones I have tend to look kind of like warts, which is nasty. I had him freeze a few of those off while I was there. Not a fun process, but I look forward to being growth free. And I don’t have cancer! Life is good.

In other cranio-facial sort of news, one of my old ear tubes just fell out. You may or may not know that these things are standard procedure for me--because of the goofed-up cilia thing, my ears are highly prone to infection and just generally always plugged up and uncomfortable. Ear tubes are little bitsy plastic grommets that are inserted through the eardrum to allow drainage and prevent all that from happening. The one in my left ear had fallen out of my eardrum several months ago, which I was almost immediately aware of because my hearing decreased and the pain got worse. I'd gotten somewhat used to it the past four months or so. But just recently I had a nasty head cold that totally stopped up that ear--what I didn't know was that this ear tube was just hanging out in my ear canal and further obstructing my ability to hear. Well, now it's gone! I'm amazed at how tiny those things are. For a few seconds I considered taking a photo of it for you, but it wasn't very pretty after all this time and I realize that most of you don't have the childlike fascination that I do for medical procedures. Here's a stock photo of some ear tubes for the curious (mine was like the little white one with the red measurement above it). I didn't include the picture of an ear tube actually inserted into an ear drum out of concern for those of you who are delicate squeamish types. I try to be nice.