So the mole extraction went well. Pretty much exactly what I was expecting. My range of movement is a little limited today, owing to the five sets of stitches I have on my chest and back, but everything is otherwise fine.
And this happy outcome is due in large part to the wonder drug Lidocaine. From Wikipedia:
Lidocaine alters depolarization in neurons, by blocking the fast sodium (Na+) channels in the cell membrane. With sufficient blockade, the membrane will not depolarise and so not transmit an action potential, leading to its anesthetic effects.
I’m here to tell you, that stuff works. I barely even felt the tugging on my skin when the dermatologist was hacking away at me with a pair of scissors. For those of you who’ve ever trimmed the excess skin and fat off a piece of chicken with a kitchen shears, you have a pretty good notion of what it’s like to be on the giving end of this procedure. And I have a pretty good idea what it’s like to be on the receiving end.
Leah had a removal some months back, and she made the mistake of looking down just as the nurse was lifting her recently-excised flap of skin into a collection container. Not a good idea. I made no such mistake. Still, I could hear those scissors cutting through me, even though I couldn’t feel a thing. It would’ve been nice to have had headphones or some other aural distraction while the procedure was going on.
I go back in a week from today to get one last mole removed and to get the stitches out of the five that were taken off yesterday. As you might expect, I’ll be uploading pictures of the stitched-up wounds to my Flickr account as soon as these bandages come off tonight.