My Aching Head

I had a rough night and do not feel good today AT ALL. After insisting on prescription pain killer, I ended up having a reaction to it. When the Dr. gave me Lortab, I thought I had taken it before, but I guess not. I knew I should have asked for Darvocet, which I know I can tolerate. How I hate being so sensitive to meds. I no sooner had taken the 2nd Lortab, a hydrocodone mix which by the way wasn't working anyways, when the itching began. After awhile, I thought I'd better get up and see if I was starting to turn colors like I do when I have an antibiotic reaction. Well, after nearly fainting but seeing that I was just a ghostly white, I went back to bed and took myself off the painkiller. I got up at 5 am in too much pain to sleep, and tried taking Tylenol. After dozing on the sofa for 30 minutes, I began to feel faint from the pain, and was dripping in sweat. I debated barfing, then decided not to. Good call, huh?! I REALLY don't handle pain well.

So I called the Dr. at a reasonable hour of 7:15 which I thought was nice of me, before he started seeing patients. I described my experiences of the night before and the morning fun with the Tylenol as pain reliever. He wasn't willing to prescribe Darvocet since he really felt in the first place that I would be just fine with OTC. Seriously? 500 mg Tylenol covers the pain from a chunk of skin removed equal to the diameter and thickness of a nickel? After some discussion, he said I could alternate it with Motrin since the threat of bleeding is now pretty much passed. Well.... the threat of MY bleeding is. I am a cranky person when I have a head wound people!! Beware!! We ended the conversation with an out that if by late afternoon I am still in bad shape he will call in some kind of non-opiate pain reliever. Whatever, dude, I don't care what it is, I just don't want to barf.

So the actual procedure: they marked my head with sharpie, then iodined my whole face. The nurse gave me several injections to numb the area. I am not afraid of needles, but she got me a little worried because she said they would really sting and burn. I am not sure you should be saying that! I think it would have been better described as a "Stick and a Sting". Once she got about 3 in, I didn't hardly feel even that, except for a couple of less numbed areas going in. After 15 minutes they tested to see if I was indeed numb. There were a couple spots not numbed enough so I got needled again. Then the dr came in and next thing you know, I feel a line being drawn across my forehead. I kept my eyes closed and went to my happy place, trying hard not to think about the fact that was a scalpel cutting into my skin there. Ewwww.

After a bit, I was roused from my happy place by a very distinct snip-snip-snip. I could even feel the tugging, but no other sensation. I gotta say it was really gross. So of course, I said "that sounds an awful lot like scissors" and the dr confirms he is using very small scissors on me. My reply? "That is so disgusting". I considered sharing the conversation Indy and I had about how gross we think his job is, but decided to save that for another time.

In between cutting, snipping and stuff, they were cauterizing. Eww, ewww, ewwwww. I told them before anything began that I would be the stillest person ever if they would just warn me ahead of the cauterization so I could hold my breath. Otherwise they would probably have a gagger. Their choice. I can hold my breath for a really long time too. So everytime he had to do that, I would take a deep breath and hold it. One time I jumped and he thought I had felt it. I said, "it almost hurt, but it didn't". It was kind of like a shock that I could feel in my hairline. I thought maybe a wire was moving in my hairline that I didn't know was there. He said it was a nerve that runs vertically and he was probably hitting it. Umm, ok, stop?! It kept happening after that.

When all of that FINALLY ended, and I gotta say it took so long my happy place was not happy anymore in the slightest, the sewing up began. That took even longer. I thought I could amuse myself by counting stitches. I stopped after a good long while, probably somewhere after 20. Mostly because I was distracted when I started to regain some feeling. At one point I go "I kinda felt that!" and the dr said "kinda?" I told him if it was the last one on the far right I could tolerate it, but if he was going to do anymore leatherworking over there, I needed more local first. Complete silence. Oh, that went over quite well. Then he said he was done there until the next row. Next row?! By the time he hit my forehead side I got a real zinger and went for an "OOWWW!" lest they think I was lying about my pain level tolerance being a ZERO. I think he did it on purpose. So I got re-numbed all over and the work commenced until it was done. My dr is really a nice guy, and I hope to see that he's as super talented as well. He said it will be a thin ridge for about 6 weeks. I will have a quizzical look for a couple of weeks as he had to pull the skin pretty tight making one brow higher than the other. My bangs better be long enough to cover that! The lab results come back in a week to 10 days.

They cleaned it all up, put a several layers of bandages over it. I thought about asking to see it, but decided my stomach was done for the day. Besides, now I have something to look forward to, hahah. A pressure bandage on top of all that and gave me a bunch of post-op instructions. They tried to talk me out of my prescription painkillers. And here we are. I am left wondering, if they find any more signs of melanoma next week that I will have to do this for?! Ugh.