The Date is Set

Yesterday I had my appointment with the MOHS surgeon.

Apparently, I'm much too young to be seeing him for skin cancer, or so he informed me as soon as he walked into the room. Yea, I think so too, buddy, thanks.

My surgery is scheduled for September 15. They're going to cut a circular slice of my skin with a laser then ship me off to a waiting room. Then he's going to cut the slice into quadrants and test each quadrant for cancer. If there are any quadrants still showing cancer, in I go again to have another slice taken from the corresponding area on my face. This will be repeated as many times as necessary to remove all the cancer.

It may be a long day.

Luckily, the "reconstruction" (i.e., "patching up the hole") is done right after the surgery by the same doctor. And this is all he does - MOHS surgery and post-MOHS reconstruction. So I'm hoping the cancer isn't too deep and I won't need skin grafts or other such stuff.

I have to cut back on smoking before and after the surgery - NO MOM, SMOKING DOESN'T CAUSE SKIN CANCER - but it'll inhibit any healing (especially if I need a skin graft). That's going to be hard, but it also may be a great time to quit. We'll see.

I'm presently a little more worried, though - I found another bump on my face last night, right below the inner corner of my eye. It's extremely small, but it doesn't look like a pimple. I'm not sure what it is, but hopefully it's nothing. Yesterday I asked the doctor about the chances for reoccurance or a BCC popping up elsewhere on my face. He said, matter-of-factly, "You're fair complected and have sun damage. It could pop up anywhere". Great. Bummer I didn't see this new bump before I went in yesterday.

So for now, it's still a waiting game. I'm not too nervous about the surgery yet, but I'm guessing the week of September 12, I'll start to feel some anxiety.