Wick – Double Diamonds: Week 11, 13 July

This week has been busier than last week, for a change.  For the most part, it’s been busy doing nothing, and this is intentional.  For last Tuesday, I had day case surgery on my scalp.  I’d been to the local hospital for a biopsy at the end of May.  Then the hospital phoned a fortnight ago to say they had an opening in their surgery schedule, would I like the appointment?  At this stage, I hadn’t received the results of the biopsy, which was read over the phone. The biopsy had revealed a basal cell carcinoma, which does not spread but needs excision.

Another sunny day

The surgery was done under local anaesthetic, which was topped up regularly whenever I said, ‘Ouch!’. Mostly, though, I didn’t feel anything but could hear the hair being shaved and the zap of the cauterisation tool.  The surgeon said the lesion was large at about 1 cm, and a 4 mm margin also needed to be removed, creating a wound of nearly 2 cm (that’s 0.79”). Near the end of the procedure, the surgeon recommended a skin graft because the skin on my scalp wasn’t stretchy enough for the edges of the wound to meet.  He also added that a graft could be done at a later date, using skin from an arm.  In the meantime, he re-shaped the wound to draw the incision closer together, and I’m hoping I won’t need a graft.

Swirls of foam

The procedure took an hour and a half.  Afterwards, the nurses did their best to clean up my hair, joking about the ‘pink rinse’.  The incision has been stitched with both dissolvable and non-dissolvable sutures, and on top of it there’s a giant gel/gauze dressing stuck to my scalp.  On top of that are more gauze pads, held in place with stretchy gauze strips.  For the first few days, the strips were tightly bound around my forehead with criss-cross strips to hold the dressings in place.  This was uncomfortable, making it difficult to get my glasses on and off and putting pressure on my temples.  However, the dressings are changed daily, and we changed to having the gauze around my chin, which is much more comfortable.  There hasn’t been any bleeding; day to day, there’s been no change in the wound except for the better.  The nurses say everything is looking good.  I see the surgeon again on Wednesday.

The surgery set me back far more than I’d anticipated.  On first day this was understandable, but I was very tired the following days too, and am only now getting some energy back.  On the positive side, I’m out of the house every day because I need to get the dressing changed at the surgery.  The pain is manageable too – it’s mostly a dull ache, except when I raise my eyebrows.

Because I’ve been lazing around doing as little as possible, the knitting has taken a hit.  Even so, only about 20 rows remain until the cuff, and the gansey, is finished!  If I’d been told that I’d finish a gansey in 11 weeks, I’d have been incredulous.