Unexpected Ear Surgery, Part III (conclusion)

I should be at the hospital getting my ear surgery about now. But I’m not. I’m sitting here at home typing this post. No, I didn’t chicken out. I received the medical equivalent of “Bank Error in Your Favor” and I did indeed jump back and almost lost my top hat.

The doctor called me and said he had finally heard back from the lead pathologist and melanoma expert at UCLA. This opinion apparently trumped the opinions of the regular pathologist and a dermatologist. I’m not really sure what the doctor pecking order is, and I don’t care. But I think they use some type of Rock/Paper/Scissors system. I’m just happy not to have to be put under and have a knife stuck in my ear again.

The lead pathologist thought the surgery was unnecessary at this time and thought careful clinical follow up will suffice for now. The growth was benign and didn’t even show signs of melanoma, so there was nothing to be concerned about at this time. Woo-hoo!

I felt my whole body relax. Wow. No more of Michael Jackson’s favorite anesthesia. No more of the doctors and nurses mentioning that it was his favorite. No skin graft. No tube in my ear for a week. But no getting out of childcare for a few days. Oh well, it’s a fair exchange.

The call came right after my wife had rearranged her entire work schedule around my surgery and recovery. She then proceeded to call everyone back. I’m not sure if her boss thought she made the whole thing up or not, but that’s her problem.

So I have to go to the ear doctor every three months to be monitored. No problem.

Truth be told, I’m not really sure what freaked me out more. The anesthesia was something I was a bit frightened and anxious about. Visions of everything from complications and alien abductions to the ending of The Sixth Sense all had me quite uneasy.

But was that really it? Probably not. The real uneasiness was feeling my sense of mortality. I’ve felt it before, and I don’t like it. It sobers you, makes you think and makes you realize your time on this planet is finite. It’s like getting a reminder card from the Grim Reaper.

But come on, only old people have surgeries. They’re not for people like us, right? People who use the internet don’t have surgeries. We’re too young, hip, and on the cutting edge… I have an iPhone! But after the denial wore off I just wanted it over with. Again. For the third time. Luckily there was no third time. I can now go back to my regularly scheduled blissful, ignorant denial of my mortal coil. Who’s with me?

Unexpected Ear Surgery Part II

This I had to share. I was walking with our 20 month old and a guy drives up to me and says “Have you seen a little dog running around, looks like a fox?”
“No. What’s it’s name?”
“Foxy”
“I’ll keep an eye out. And you are the most uncreative person in the world.”

So I go in the next day for my ear surgery to remove some tissue with some atypical cells in it. I am very nervous, more about the anesthesia than anything else. After a brief wait in the lobby they called me back and my adventure began.

The first thing you always have to do is “get changed”. Is there anything in the new Obama healthcare package about replacing hospital gowns that cover nothing and are impossible to tie? It’s 2010 people. Let’s advance hospital gown technology, shall we? So while they are working on my ear and I still had to strip and put a gown on. Great.

They gave me a warm towel which was interesting and I sat and waited for the event. The doctor came in and talked to me and told me what he was going to do, again. Cut out the growth in a 2 mm margin down my ear canal. Got it. Then he told me I may need a skin graft but he’ll see how it goes. Wait, what?!

Then the anasthesologist came in and told me that it was safe and there was another Michael Jackson reference. OK, I got it. He used it at home without supervision. I’m assuming there is going to be a bit more supervision here at the hospital than at Neverland Ranch, right?
I have to admit, I was really nervous. I didn’t want to be put under and I have a fear of… all sorts of things. But the doctors did their best to reassure me and I did feel better.

Then it was showtime and I was shown to my warm bed surrounded by machines and tools. They plugged me into the happy juice and made me keep talking.
“Feel it yet?”
“No”
“Wow, you’re a tough one. Think about somewhere you want to go on vacation. Seriously.”

I talked about New Zealand and soon enough I was out. It occurred to me as I was going under that with two children, this is probably the only way I’m going to get any uninterrupted sleep. So maybe I should relax and enjoy it a little bit. But it’s a dreamless sleep. You get put under and you wake up as if no time has passed.

When I woke up I was so nauseous that I forgot to be joyful that I was indeed awake. So I got to throw up and get a nice shot in the leg for nausea. But hey, it worked. I felt better. Then my wife came back and while I was happy to be awake, I kinda wanted to go back to sleep. After effects of the drugs.

So I went home with my ear completely blocked up and was uncomfortable and disoriented for about another day. Then I was just uncomfortable, then just annoyed, which is what I am all the time anyway so I was almost back to normal.

I went back to the doctor a few days later to get all the bandages and the tube out of my ear. That’s when he said,” I have mostly good news for you” said the doctor. I didn’t like the sound of that. Well, I liked the sound of half of it. Turns out everything was benign which is awesome, but the bad news is that it looks like they didn’t get it all. I have to go back in and do it again. Next week. They are going to take more tissue out and it will be a longer recovery. Great. The worst part is that I was just thinking “wow, I won’t have to have anastesia again for a while.” Apparently a while was about two and a half weeks. Meh.

Unexpected Ear Surgery Part 1

The last thing you want to have to hear are the words “unexpected” and “surgery” in any sentence. I’ve been a bit sick lately, from my two children trying to kill me slowly with cold germs, but then things got a bit more dramatic. This has all of course affected my computer time and I realize I’m a bit more obsessed than normal. “The internet misses me!” Yes, indeed. It misses all of us.

So I go to the ear doctor once a year because I have a ridiculous problem of overproducing ear wax in my right ear which them blocks up to the point where I lose hearing in that ear. But this time I went in and the doctor found something extra. A “growth”. And no idea what it was. Wart? Mole? Cyst? Alien spore? He suggested we snip it off in the office and I setup another appointment to do so.

So I went back and they numbed the area, or so I thought and snipped it off. All this is taking place inside my ear canal through a microscope. Now I couldn’t feel it, but I sure could hear it. Not pleasant.

“We’re just going to cauterize it now.” Wait, what?! Great, now not only could I hear the sizzle, I smelled smoke as well. AND some of the numbness went away. “We call that a hotspot” said the doctor after he saw me wince. But now it was out of me and off to the lab.

I go back for a follow-up and that’s when it gets weird. “We needed to get a second opinion. It appears benign, but it’s a growth that shouldn’t be there. We’re recommending we get the rest of it out. I do surgeries on Fridays. I’ll have to put you under.”

Whaaat?! I need surgery?! AND I’m going to be put under?! I haven’t had anesthesia since I got my tonsils out as a child, or since I saw Avatar in 3-D. Honestly, I was more than a little nervous about it. I just remember counting backwards into a big black gas balloon and waking up with my throat sore. At least then I got ice cream. Not sure what the policy is now.

The doctor reassured me that it anesthesia was much safer now than it has ever been. I’ll be getting the same drug as Michael Jackson. And that’s supposed to make me feel BETTER?! The doctor then went on to explain that it’s a great drug when used under supervision at a hospital. Oh, you mean not at home recreationally? It then occurred to me a lot of people must be asking that question now. The poor drug company. Nothing like the most famous person in the world dying from your drug to give you a little bad PR. Then I thought, on the other hand, if Michael Jackson was using it, it must be pretty good.

So I scheduled the pre-op and the op. One is the day before so you can fill out paperwork and get really good and nervous before your surgery. They ask you lots of questions, and the nurse asked a few that I found interesting:

“Do use any medical devices or machines at home?”
“Recreationally or practically?”
“Do you have any problems with anxiety, depression, drugs, or alcohol?”
“…That’s a lot of things in one category. Shouldn’t we split them up?”
“(silence)”
“OK, anxiety”
“Are you feeling nervous right now?”
“What do you think?”

So after a long grilling, blood tests, an EKG, etc. The nurse said “OK, you’re free to go”
“Until tomorrow, right?”
“Right”

Next post: The surgery!