Adventures in surgery.

Last month, after years of off-putting, and with the imminent demise of my employment, I mustered up the courage to visit my doctor about the removal of a cyst that had taken up residence under my scalp oh so many years ago. At other visits he had assured me it was harmless but would continue to grow. It did continue to grow, it itched and worst of all it stymied Adorable Daughter who is also my trusted barber.

Facing the loss of perhaps the most opulent and all-inclusive Cadillac health insurance ever assembled, I knew it must no longer be postponed and made the call. Doc said OK, go see a surgeon. And he gave me the name of one he said was competent.

So I went to see the surgeon, He was pleasant enough but seemed anxious to move on out of the room. I was a bit offended, having taken pains to bathe and wash hair. The surgeon was also a man of very few words. Included in the words he failed to use were "...this is really minor" or "...I do these all the time" or "back to work the next day..." but he said none of those things. He did say he could do it there in the office, which I thought was a good thing. Then he said, "You will have quite a bit of discomfort from this--I'll probably leave you a scrip for some pain medicine." Then he left the room, with the "quite a bit of discomfort" ringing in my ears.

We set the appointment for two weeks hence and I set about to imagine how bad it might be.

Remarkably, I discovered other people have had the same procedure; I thought I was the odd duck. [I may yet be the odd duck, but not because I had a cyst to extract.] But in all of these other accounts I could not get a sense of how much recovery would be required and what the complications are from having folks saw on your head.

So the appointed hour arrived and I presented my head at the office as instructed, but that was the only instruction I had. They did not advise me what to wear, what to eat, what to expect or damned little else. The procedure actually only lasted less than 30 minutes which I assume is thousands in Central Surgeon Time, and was really quite pain free. I kept waiting for it to hurt as the day wore on, but it didn't happen. Good for me because the good surgeon chose against pain meds.

"Just take whatever you usually take for a headache," he said. And that was about all he said. Not even a good-bye or a go-to-hell; he just walked out and after you've had a fellow with his fingers right there on your skull for a half-hour you feel you should get a proper farewell.

By the way, the scalp bleeds profusely and the gore is incredible. The nurse advised me to go home, shower all the blood out of my hair and expect the wound to bleed for a while. It did.

She also told me not to freak when I looked at the water running into the drain in the shower. "It will run really pink," she warned. It did.

Maybe the low point of the whole thing was trying to lay still while he was cutting a hole in my head, and listening to the nurse who assisted say "Is that a cyst or a lymphoma?" He answered that it was probably a cyst but I had not entertained any thoughts of housing anything other than the cyst. Equally low was that very few asked afterwards "How did it go? How are you feeling?" What the hell good is it to have surgery if you don't get a little attention and sympathy from your friends and coworkers? You guys can see me, right?

But in the end, the surgeon of few words was right for not loading me up with percoset. Amazingly I really never was anything more than moderately sore. I have had much worse pain which didn't involve the medical community. A couple of days ago they took the stitches out, and I didn't feel that either. So it looks like Doc picked me a good surgeon, very skilled but seemingly contemptuous of us peasants.

And the best part--Adorable Daughter can cut my hair without complications. I don't want to do this often but you really need to take care of a good barber. Could be they're harder to get than good surgeons.

Next up: Colonoscopy!!