Moley Moley Moley Moley - Update

Yeah. The floss-tying thing went totally awry. It hurt terribly for the first two days. The third day, it felt so much better, but then I realized it was because the floss had fallen off. The mole did look like it was dying, though.

So I had Ben tie new floss around the base. Again, soooo much pain. But the floss fell off again the next day.

Ben was like, "This is ridiculous. The mole looks like it's dead. Let me just cut it off."

The thought of Ben cutting it off, with nothing to numb the area, made me really green around the gills. But the thought of tying floss around the base of it again also made me green around the gills. But I was also scared that having something dead attached to my body probably wasn't very good for me. Like a Civil War soldier whose gangrenous leg would have killed him. I don't know much about stuff like that, but I kept thinking, "We need to amputate this mole before it infects my whole armpit!!" So I begged and pleaded with Ben to let me go to Community Care and have them take it off the right way. He finally said yes. (I think I would have still gone, even if he had said no. I'm rebellious like that. And he's not my parent.)

So I went to Community Care last night and had to go through the embarrassing process of telling three people (receptionist, nurse, doctor) why I was there - "I tried to take off my own mole with dental floss, and I think something is terribly wrong now."

The doctor said that it was a good thing I went in - the dead mole might have infected my whole armpit. He said he would cut it off. I begged him (I did a lot of begging last night, come to think of it) to give me a little shot there to deaden the area first. He said it would sting worse than cutting the mole off, but I told him that was a risk I was willing to take. There was no way I was going to get it cut off without a shot there first. So he shot me up (it hurt way less than the floss-tying had) and did the deed! He ended up needing to cauterize it, actually. So it was a good thing Benny didn't cut the mole off - we don't have silver nitrate hanging around our house. Who knows what might have happened if Ben had been my surgeon.

The shot wore off after a couple of hours, and the pain set in again. It hurt pretty badly all night, and today, it's just sore. I keep thinking of my little baby boys, when they got circumcized. Were they in as much pain as I was last night? They got cut and cauterized with silver nitrate. Poor things.

I had to really, really fight the temptation to ask the doc to just cut off my ugly neck mole while he was at it. I had asked Ben if I could just have them do my neck, too, and he said no way. He wants to wait until we reach the maximum out-of-pocket for me, which will happen when we have the baby. And he also wants me to go to a proper dermatologist, because he wants minimal scarring. The neck is more visible than the armpit, after all. I told him, "Scarring, schmarring." I'd rather have a scar than a nasty, knobbly mole on my neck. But I guess I'll wait a few months. Trust me, though, that thing is coming off someday. Ben wishes I would keep it. Nope.