the healing skin still looks a bit like the rough surface of the cratered moon, but i no longer need to wear a bandaid on it. my shoulder is a conspicuous place for a scar, and i would be happier without it, though i doubt it will ever completely fade away.
more recently, my problem has been with an ankle that got caught in a subway turnstile on my way home one night. i stayed off of it for almost a week, and am now forced to wear the same pair of high-heeled sandals every day, despite the winter temperatures.
somehow, i always manage to injure my feet during the least convenient times of the year. broken toe with a too-big boot during a blizzard?
on saturday night i tried an experiment, i left the band aid off for awhile. but that made it start hurting, and then when i looked at it in the mirror, the weird white layer that was either doctor applied or body-made had disappeared. so then i put a band aid back on. but now i'm getting a rash from the band aids. so now i'm wearing a gigantic band aid with polysporin not only applied to my wound, but to my regular ol' back.
after awhile the weird whiteness came back.
and at carla's on saturday, i asked jimmy's boyfriend, a radiologist, if the what was going on was "healing" or "infection." he said healing, so there we go.
it's itching now, and is really in such a bad spot for trying to live a normal life without aggravating it. i have to be really careful about not carrying my purse on that shoulder, not sleeping on my back, not letting my bra strap migrate over that way. even just wearing my jacket kind of hurts sometimes because the mole was taken off on top of my shoulder blade so it gets flexed and stretched a lot.
a surprising thing about my cut is how large it is, but also how perfectly circular. the largeness i guess is so to make sure that any possibly cancerous tissue is caught up in the purge. but the absolute regularity of the scalpeled edge is remarkable for someone working freehand.
having an open wound is strange, and my instructions say to keep changing its dressing everyday for a week, so i guess at that point it will start scarring and healing. i'm interested to see what kind of scar i'll have, but also very interested in making sure there is as little permanent scarring as possible.
what anasthetic i was shot with yesterday, it worked immediately, caused no numbness, and then four hours later, completely wore off in one fell swoop. up until then i chose to willfully ignore the fact that what had happened might ever cause me pain. and then, all of a sudden, it did. peeking at the gouge underneath the bandaid before i went to bed, the wound was all white. had the doctor put something on it? i also didn't bleed at all. i had to wash it this morning, soap and lukewarm water. i didn't like doing that. the wound is much bigger than i thought it would be. also i have a sick feeling that i'm missing something i shouldn't be. i miss my mole. when i was little, i would stretch out the necks of tshirts so that i could wear them a little bit off the shoulder because i thought it was sexy. when i was very little. and now it's gone, and i'm sad. and the mole that used to be on my other shoulder, as i grew is now in the middle of my back.
i thought, after i had left the doctor, that i should have taken a picture of the suspended mole.
as part of pretending at becoming a responsible adult, i've become better about scheduling myself to go to the doctor. the dentist every six months, all that. today i had a mole cut off, even when the dermatologist said he didn't recommend it. its size and location means it'll probably leave a scar and it wasn't yet anything i should worry about. but since i do worry about it and would rather not have to monitor its size and shape and color, i told him to cut it off. the shot to numb the area was actually pretty painful, but then not only didn't i feel the pain of cutting, i wouldn't have even known he had started if he hadn't told me.
he'll have it tested, but i don't imagine it will be a problem.
once he left the room, i peeked at the removed mole, floating in alcohol. it was pretty gross.
