Oooh, Vicodin

I'm sitting here in a lovely Vicodin fog today, because yesterday was my Mohs surgery for the skin cancer.

It went well; they got the cancer out in the first pass, but I was there all day. My appt was at 9:45, they called me back shortly after ten, hooked me up with a grounding pad (so I wouldn't get an electrical shock when they cauterized my wound with their electric cattle prod thing), gave me several novocaine shots in the nose (OUCH!) and sliced a good 1/2" diameter hole out of the side of my nose. The doctor told me it would be about an hour before they called me back in (as the lab needed to determine if the margins were clear, meaning that they got all the cancer out). Two hours later, they called me back in, the doc said that she'd gotten all the cancer out already, but that they couldn't close up the wound until after lunch because the whole office shuts down at 12:30 for an hour. So off I went for a burrito, after getting another couple of novocaine shots.

At 2:00 pm, they called me back in again, hooked me back up, and gave me more novocaine shots. The doctor took a chunk of skin from right in front of my ear for a skin graft, closed that up, and then attached the graft to the nose and sewed that up. Then she sewed a dressing on top of the graft and gave me strict instructions not to get it wet or mess with it at all for a week, at which time I'll go back into the office and she'll remove the dressing and the stitches near my ear. She gave me a bag full of polysporin ointment packets and bandaids, and sent me off to the pharmacy to pick up Keflex (hardcore antibiotics) and Vicodin.

The worst part was the drive home, because I'd been in the pharmacy for oh, about half an hour, and the anesthetic was starting to wear off. By the time I got home I was in some pretty good pain and really ready for those vicodin.

I'm glad it's all done now, and all I have to do is figure out a way to shower and wash my hair without getting my nose wet at all.