surgery it is

so this saturday we spent our day bouncing between urgent care and the ER. my head laceration was oozing pus, the scab was growing because of the amount of pus it was putting out. it didn't feel right, i knew something was up. and it was driving me crazy because i couldn't see it!

we were able to get an appointment with the UCLA folks on monday afternoon. that one was interesting. the resident tried to tell me that it looked fine to her. i asked her enough questions that stumped her, so she called in her attending. this attending decided to literally scrape out the wound, using gauze and scissors. more importantly, NOT using lidocaine. just wait, it gets better. then, he cauterized the entire area with silver nitrate, and had his resident hold pressure to the area for a couple minutes after. can i just say, i feel it's a major sign of my own personal growth that that resident is still walking the earth. as a sidebar, i asked the attending what he thought of my 'ass-let', my tumor looking thing on my thigh/ass. he essentially said that if it was already 4+ weeks out from the event, and it was still that size, his professional opinion was that it would never resolve/reabsorb. excellent. he left the appointment saying that he would deal with that after everything else was healed, and that he'd see us again at the end of the week to see my head again.

fast forward to today. thank the lord dave was with me for this appointment. you never know, as a nurse how to go about asking for something from docs, especially docs you don't know. my worry was that 1) his idea of 'waiting for everything to resolve' was just going to take forever, and 2) if we went into june, i'd have no support system for surgery like this, since my mom will be starting the summer semester, and dave his new job. i was terrified that he was going to want to wait longer. this would mean even more time off work for me. and i'm going friggin' nuts here. i gotta say.

i was so nervous my blood pressure was up, my HR was up. i went through 2 pre-screening residents before the attending finally made it in. i kind of hammered him with a few of my pleads as to why we needed to do this ASAP instead of waiting. at one point it was apparent that he was just plain tired of hearing me talk, so he interrupted me with the actual plan for the procedure. = success. i don't feel bad rushing this decision. i feel it's one he would've come to anyway. in fact, i know he would have. he's the one who said it wouldn't resolve itself. and dammit, i'm a patient now, and putting this off longer would only be a hardship. the longer it's put off, the longer i have to just sit here, stagnant, watching life.

needless to say, the surgery date has been scheduled. right now, i'm ecstatic. i really like my doc, i feel he's the perfect one for my case. even if he didn't use lidocaine. the scar from the procedure sounds like it will be massive, since he has to cut from one end to the other. but, when that sucker is stapled back up, the healing process begins. that means my life can return to normal just as fast as i can heal, we can get on with LIVING.

ps - i've uploaded all my injury pics. if interested, go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2057621&id=1139507816&l=2a5f818780