Cancer free, Wilma

I had the skin cancer removed yesterday. I was not really nervous about the procedure at all. The way it worked was they cut out skin and then checked to see if they got it all and if not, cut again. The doc injected the area with a local anisthetic. It was a weird sensation since the area was right in front of my ear. I heard the cutting going on but it sounded like he was cutting through cardboard or thick paper. It didn’t hurt. I had to go back in for a second round of cutting. By the time he was done I had a hole on the side of my head between the size of a dime and a nickel. I saw pictures of it, it looked like a bullet hole. The nurse came out and told us that they got all the bad cells and that we could come back at either 12 or 1:20 to close up. I paused for a second thinking it was odd that I would not go right back in to get closed up, but then said we would come back at 12 (it was only 9:30) So Ali and I burned up a couple hours running errands and going to Target. I didn’t even give much thought to my ear that was covered with tape and gauze pads, although I’m sure people wondered what the deal was. In my mind I expected the closure procedure to be a simple couple stitches and done. It took much longer than expected. When he started he was getting into areas that weren’t numb so he had to reinject those spots. He stitched and stitched, again it felt odd, almost like he was tying a shoe, except the shoe was the side of my face. I sort of got a mini facelift in that area as he had to pull the skin tight to close up the gap, what was a big circle shaped wound is now a straight line. Once the numbing stuff wore off later in the day it was hurting quite a bit. Doc gave me two vicoden but I instead opted for advil since I was unsure of how I would react to vicoden. Today, it is a bit painful but much less so than yesterday. I have a Frankenstein looking, couple inch long stitched line in front of my ear. Because of it’s location it would be a mess to bandage, so I have it exposed for all to see. It’s a nice conservation maker. I’m not looking to have the procedure done again. Wear sunscreen.

In the blink of an eye, this storm went from non-hurricane to a category 5 in less than 24 hours. I have never heard of a storm transforming so quickly and to make matters worse, the current path takes it plowing right through our area. You can sense the mild panic already beginning. I am counting on the fact that no long term projected path I have ever seen for a hurricane has turned out to be accurate. So I am hoping for the forecasters to continue their poor performance, yet we still need to get ready. I have 4 five gallon gas cans in the back of the truck which I’ll fill after work for the generator. If the track continues to be as it is now, I’ll be pulling out the plywood storm shutters we created last year and turning our house into a pitch black tomb again. I have to admit I thought we were pretty much out of the woods at this point. The best news is the gulf water has cooled enough by this time of year that any storm should lose strength as it travels north instead of intensifying. It is going to be a stressful week coming up.