Wednesday February 1, 2023
Nothing can rescue this day, unless the pills I have just taken stop the pain in the wound left by the excision of a skin cancer next to my left ear.
At 9.45 am, I checked in with Joan at the surgery of the dermatologist, Dr. Bryan Pang, in order to have three squamus skin cancers removed--two on my right knee and one by my ear. Things went briskly at first--into a changing room: strip off down to my underpants and socks: put on a gown: taken into an area where I lay down on a bed, surrounded by curtains...but then I waited and waited and waited. It was, I believe, about an hour before Pang came in and and spent fifteen minutes or so drawing little diagrams around the places where he would make the incisions. He told me the anesthetist would be with me shortly.
He wasn't.
I must have waited at least another half an hour before he arrived and gave me the local anesthetics. And then another long wait before I was wheeled into the operating theater. The nurses did a lot of preparatory work before Pang arrived to start the incisions. I lost track of time, but my guess is that it took him about three quarters of an hour to complete the surgery (during which he related in great detail the story of his medical training in the U.S.) and there was another fifteen minutes while the nurses dressed the wounds. Before letting me get my clothes back on, they placed me in a chair, brought me some orange juice, and took my blood pressure.
It seems we left the surgery at about 1.30 pm, which means I was there for nearly four hours. And the excisions and the stitching, while not exactly painful, were very stressful and uncomfortable. And the waiting....well.
So it goes. Uber home. Intense pain from the ear incision. Nothing from the knee incisions. Later in the afternoon, poor Joan, who spent much of her morning in the waiting room (and took a break visiting the Anzac Memorial), did the shopping at Coles and brought back some pain killers. (Can I spell the make?) Paracetamol (Got it first try). And I have just taken a second one as the first does not seem to have had much of an effect.
I have a great bandage round my head, covering the ear excision, but I can take that off tomorrow.
On Friday, the wounds will be checked. Undoubtedly another long wait...