Weirdness

Yesterday, I went to the clinic where I had the minor surgery performed two weeks ago. The surgeon removed the stitches from the incision he made to remove suspicious tissue that may have contained additional carcinoma. The lab report was good. They found no more basal cell tissue.

The surgeon brought a student in the treatment room to observe the suture removal and to discuss the technique used for the procedure. He referred to the process as subcutaneous suturing. The Better Half was in the room and told me that he clipped off a knot at the bottom of the incision and then pulled the knot at the top to remove the remaining suture.

You can view the incision with the sutures at this post. You can view the “after” result by clicking in the rectangle above right. Voila! the subcutaneous technique left very little scarring. It is nothing like the spiderweb scar that a former surgeon left on my back a few years ago.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an appointment with my medical caregiver to remove a dime-sized growth on my right shoulder. I went home with a little round bandage on the excised area.

The lab at the clinic performed a biopsy on the removed tissue and it turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma – skin cancer in other words. I got a call last week that they wanted to schedule a second procedure that would remove additional tissue that would “get it all.”

On Monday, I went in to have the second procedure performed. After it was all finished, I had a two-inch gash on the shoulder held together with a bunch of sutures.

This is actually the second time I have gone through this; the first basal cell removal and follow-up occurred before I retired in 2009 and left a nasty, jagged scar in the middle of my back.

This time, this surgeon did a much better job of stitching me up; if you’re inclined to view my new nice, straight incision, you can click in the rectangle above and to the right.