The Long Day

Yesterday, I took my husband to the hospital for MOHS surgery. This is surgery for skin cancer. About six weeks ago, I noticed a small black dot on my husband's face. It was different from his other skin lesions, and I suggested he have it checked.

It came back positive as a basal cell carcinoma and the primary care physician did not get it all in the initial biopsy. Of course, his came back as a rare kind since it was black. Usually, these things are a little white pearly bump. Basal cell is not that big of a deal and is fairly common, although no one wants to be told they have a cancer.

Anyway, the surgery to remove the remainder of his skin cancer was yesterday. We were told it could be an all-day event.

Actually, it took about as long for him to get this taken care of than it did to have his hip replaced.

When he went in, the woman looked first at a place below his ear, which we had thought was a cyst. She said no, it needed to come off, and since she was cutting on him, she did both places. The initial place was across from his eye and down about a finger's width on his cheek.

She did the surgery on both places, and we waited. The test results indicated she'd cut out all the cancer in the first spot, but the new second spot that she'd decided to go ahead with was positive (no one ever said what kind of cancer it was), and she didn't get it all.

So, we had to wait some more for him to go back in for a second surgery on this spot.

We had lunch at the hospital cafeteria while we waited. Then we waited some more in the waiting room. We were there about six and a half hours, and he came out with half of his face bandaged up.

When we returned home, he went hunting. He was supposed to take it easy today, and he mostly has, but he is back out hunting again this evening.

In the meantime, some other family things that are not my story to tell, but which are worrisome, have been weighing heavily on my mind.

It's made for a tough few days.