A close Shave

So I finally went to see the dermatologist about getting an ugly, nasty looking mole taken off my hand. (At Christmas, my doctor-sister saw it and said I should have it removed soonest!)

So the dermy comes in, (a rather nice looking young doctor. I figured she was mid-thirties. But I digress :-), she takes one look at the mole and says it has to come off.
“Shave?” Says the not nearly as pretty nurse.
“Yes.”
So they set things up, take measurements and a picture (I don’t know why they need a picture.)
The Doc sits down at the terminal and enters the info about the mole. “We’ll have to have a biopsy”. She says.
“I expected that. It’s pretty nasty looking.”
“If the results are positive, then you’ll have to come back.”
“Yes, because you’ll have ‘trench work’ to do.”
She stopped typing for a second and I could see her thinking. Rolling the phrase around in her head, feeling how it tasted. Then she smiled just a little. “‘Trench work’, I like that. It will require stitches.” And she resumed typing.
And I knew I had her. She liked my odd sense of humor and she understood it. She was like me in some strange way.
She turned to me, “Just the mole on the hand?”
“No, there is a large mole/skin tag just below my belt line, here in front.”
“Does it bother you?”
“I’ve caught it with my fingernail a few times and torn it when I got undressed.”
“Let me see.”
I pushed the waistline of my jeans down an inch or so and she could see it. (No, I don’t take my pants off for just anyone, even an attractive young doctor with a good sense of humor!)
“We’ll freeze it.” She said.
(Yes, I know what you’re going to say; of course I didn’t want to take my pants off. I didn’t want her to cut off the wrong little odd piece of skin! Well, you can just shut up, smart-ass.)

A few blasts of liquid nitrogen and then it was time for the slice and dice.

A little alcohol, a couple of pricks with the needle and the back of my hand was numb. Then the Doc picked up a thin piece of metal between her thumb and forefinger and it bent into a U-shape.
“That looks like half of an old-fashioned safety razor.”
“It is.”
“Good to see they still have a use for them.”
She smiled a little, blocked my view with a piece of gauze and shaved the mole off .
Neat, smooth, practiced. She dumped the lump of flesh into the sample bottle the nurse held and then started dabbing the wound to staunch the flow of blood.
She looked up at me. “Do you take aspirin?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s working.” And she smiled a little.
Yes, a good sense of humor. Too bad she is a dermy, not a GP. If she were a GP, I’d change doctors right away. And it’s not just because she is good looking. She has a sense of humor. My current GP doesn’t have one.

She finally got the blood to slow and put a large bandage over the 3/8 inch(9.5mm) hole she had scooped out of my hand.

After I got the wound care instructions and a bag of antiseptics and bandages, I was done.

Now I have those classic conflicted feelings. To see the nice pretty doctor again would be a good thing. But if I go back to her office, it will be because the mole was cancerous and she will have to carve a trench in my hand.

I am not looking forward to that.