Hand Me My Black Ribbon - Part 2

Did you read Part 1?  Things will make a lot more sense if you do.

Welcome to Part 2 of the Skin Cancer Diaries!  I'm glad you're back!  (Have you scheduled your annual skin check yet?  I told you I was going to be a nutter about this now.)

Thursday, October 26

While I slept a bit longer than on surgery day, I was still wide awake by 3:30am; as is my normal procedure in situations like this, I headed to Chris' office to sit in his comfy chair, surf my phone, and read a book.  My night wasn't too bad; although my neck was a little stiff from sleeping in an elevated position (helps reduce swelling, according to the Phoenix Skin clinic, where I had my Mohs surgery) and I was stuffed up from not being able to blow my nose very well (thank you, pressure bandage - I am counting the minutes until I can take you off my face), I got a decent amount of sleep overall.  Even with the bandage on, I can see that my cheek is starting to swell and/or bruise, which should make viewing my full face again pretty exciting.

You can see it's a bit darker and puffier under my left eye

(the side with more of the bandage) than my right.

Only an hour until I can take this thing off!

Finally, 10am rolled around, which meant I could free my nostrils from the oppressive grip of the post-surgical bandage!  Huzzah!  Chris helped me peel it off - the tape did NOT want to give up, and most of the redness on my cheek is from that - and what I found was way less terrifying than I thought it would be.

Large bandage gone, only the small non-stick pad left!

That's some fun bruising you see under the eye - I have a shiner!

The line of stitches stretches almost the full length of my dorsum nasi

You can see where the doc had to create a little pocket next to my nose

When Tatiana the tech discharged me on Wednesday, she stressed the fact that when I took off the pressure bandage, I should be prepared for the area to look rough (her words, delivered with significant emphasis).  Thus, Chris and I were ready for just about anything; however, as you can see in the shots above, it wasn't bad at all!  Sure, you can see the stitches, and there are a lot of them, but this did not meet the blood curdling, faint inducing level of "rough" I was expecting at all.  Apparently, my definition of the word "rough" in this context is quite different from the staff at Phoenix Skin.

For comparison, here's a rough wound - this is when Chris laid down his bike while going 25mph back in March 2013 during training for Ironman AZ.  I took him to Urgent Care and when the intake RN asked if he'd seen his wound, Chris gleefully responded, "YEAH!  IS THAT MY BONE?!!?!"  (The RN laughed and concurred that it was, indeed). This is what our level of "rough" looks like:

Noms!

Anywhoo, we got me bandaged back up with some of the Band-Aids we still had hanging around from when Chris worked at Johnson & Johnson (they don't expire, right?):

We played around with a few different placement options, and this seemed to work best

(we tried a giant patch one, but it didn't bend well around my nose and gapped too much).

The plan is to change this twice a day, cleaning the area with unscented, antibacterial hand soap,

then coating the stitches with Aquafor or Vaseline, before covering it back up,

until I go to get the stitches removed on Wednesday, November 1st.

On the second changing of the day, I learned the importance of swapping the bandage positions around from time to time; peeling the band-aids off across the same cheek that I'd abused earlier in the day with the super sticky tape was NOT fun (that's easily been the most pain I've experienced during this adventure so far).

Angry cheek!  Also, the under eye area is really starting to swell.

I think I created a portal to a parallel world behind me.

I also texted with Dad today, to let him know what was going on.  I mentioned my family history in Part 1 of this series of blogs (lots and lots of folks in my ancestory have battled skin cancer), and once he responded that he was happy everything went well, he mentioned he'd teach me the secret handshake the next time we saw each other.  I asked how long it would take to get my membership card in the mail and what discounts it might net me on sunscreen...that would be great!

Friday, October 27

I slept all the way until 5am, which was quite exciting, despite rolling onto the bad side of my face hard enough in the middle of the night to holler about it (Chris slept right through it, as did the girls).  Sleeping elevated when you're not used to it is really challenging, but I'm hoping that will end soon (it was suggested as a means of keeping down my swelling, so hopefully, I'll be past that point in a few days).  Remember the new bandaging position I mentioned above?

This looks totally normal, not unhinged at all.

I eventually trimmed back the end going between my eyebrows and the one going across my nostril.

Check out that black eye!

I also started icing my face today; the instructions say I can apply cold for up to 20 minutes each hour, and I've been doing so fairly regularly.  I don't know if it's helping the swelling, but it feels nice, and it causes my nursemaid to really keep a close eye on me:

"Dad, what the heck happened to Mom?!?!?!"

That is one worried dog face right there.

Saturday, October 28

Since Chris was doing an epic bike ride this morning in preparation for El Tour de Tucson, I walked the doggos on my own (one after the other - they're a handful for one person to take together), then cleaned the bathrooms in the house.  This was the most fitness I've engaged in since the surgery, and it felt nice to get back into moving again, albeit much lighter than I'm used to.  The post-surgery instructions said no heavy physical activity for 48 hours, so if I still feel okay after the light duty, I'll consider a stationary bike ride on Monday (Sunday's going to be busy, so walking the girls with Chris will have to be my fitness for the day).

Went to Walgreens and CVS after work yesterday for a different set of bandages, to avoid having to rip sticky things off my angry cheek multiple times a day - I found a waterproof option in another shape, which might help keep the stitched area from drying out, as well:

New Band-Aid, who dis?

I had the awesome opportunity to go out on the (down) town with my girlfriends tonight, including to La Gattara Cat Cafe and Arizona Wilderness Brewing Co for dinner.  As I started to leave the house a bit more, I was really interested to see how people would react to my face.  Most give me a slightly longer look than normal but don't say anything; I guess since I'm friendly and relaxed, they figure the face is due to some sort of accident or surgery/illness rather than something more nefarious, and they don't inquire further (maybe they're making notes about following up later with wellness checks or something - maybe they just don't care - either way is fine, I guess).  It wasn't until my ladies and I went to our local ice cream shop for dessert on Saturday night that someone finally asked - the cute little gay scooping our cones gasped and then went, "OMG!  What happened to your nose!??!?!"  I explained the situation and he responded, "ah, that makes sense.  Better out than in."  Absolutely right!

Coming up on the next blog post, the stitches come out and the healing continues! Fun times!

Later!

Amy