For several years I've had a benign growth on my back (like my need for bifocals, yet another sign of senescence). Today it needed to come off (for reasons I will spare you, but that did manage to gross out the thirteen year old boys at my dinner table, a feat I generally have a hard time managing). So tonight at 6:15, I had the !@(* thing excised, all 3 cm of it. The physician who did it was good and kept up his end of the distracting conversation well. Alas, my attempt to describe what quantum mechanics might have to do with the nifty device that measures your blood oxygen levels while he put in the local was not up to my usual standards. I was mostly doing my best not to faint.
Just as he's getting ready to start the actual procedure, my cell phone goes off. "Better get that now," he says. I snag my purse from the chair next to the table and answer, hoping it's Math Man telling me he's home from his trip to the state capitol and I can turn the home front over to him. Nope, it's Barnacle Boy, making dinner. "Mom, we don't have any ground beef. " "Sure we do, check the top shelf of the freezer, left hand side," I reply, feeling momentarily disoriented as I sat amidst all the medical paraphernalia giving directions for this mundane task. "Thanks. Can you pick up a baguette on the way home?" Argh...is there no way to get off duty?
We treated the resulting 2 inch wound in my back with lunar caustic (silver nitrate to the modern chemist) to cauterize it, no stitches, so I can swim sooner. The local is wearing off right about now and I'm wishing I was in Dublin with a friend there on sabbatical, having a beer!
It was on the right hand side.
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