I have a high level of discomfort when it comes to thinking about doctors and anything medical. Don’t get me wrong, I fully respect the fact that individuals study their hearts out to be able to save our lives or otherwise keep us in check. But there’s absolutely and utterly no way that I could do that myself. Nup. I’m the absolutely worst candidate. I turn green or pale white, and want to faint or throw up, at the smell of clinical disinfectants or the site of needles, oozing cuts, or blood.
With an ongoing cold/flu-type thing I decided to visit the doctor’s clinic near work to check if I was doomed to annoy the people at work forever with my coughing and spluttering. As an aside I decided to ask about a mole on my chest which has been bugging me for some years and I hadn’t had checked since 2000 or so.
The conversation is hazy as I started to panic but it went something along the lines of..
“I’ll remove that for you,” the doctor says.
“How? Burn it out?”
“No, I’ll cut it out so that we can run some tests on it.”
“Err.. okay. When should I come in for that?”
“Come on, we’ll do it now.”
So after a spot of minor surgery, halfway through remembering my ex-housemates mum’s advice but being too stunned to recall more than the first few lines of my favourite songs, I was the proud (almost passed out) owner of two new stitches and the little mole I’d carried around with me for years was in a specimen jar headed off on it’s own little journey to a lab.
I’d been so proud of never having had stitches, never come close to needing them apart from one minor scrape at the age of six when an angry kid hit me on the head with a thorny branch and due to the proximity of the cut to my eye it had to be glued instead of stitched. I’m proud of never (knowingly) had a broken bone. All my scars have been self-inflicted through childhood schoolyard or cooking accidents and the minor bumps or adulthood.
While the cut healed the doctor said I was to engage in no swimming or weight lifting (er) and although I held out for a few days I couldn’t curb my want to play pool at work so despite some discomfort and an inability to stretch my right arm properly I’ve played some of my best games yet.
The stitches had freaked me out for the first three or four days – it seemed so foreign to look in the mirror and see someone’s needlework on my chest with the little string ends begging to be tucked in neatly – but I got used to them and was a little sad (or maybe it was scared) to get them taken out yesterday. However they’re now gone, and from a quick peep beneath the bandaid it seems not too hideous and fingers crossed it doesn’t leave me with too big a scar.