The day started out OK

[The_Traveler]

You'll be alright, Lew. Hang in there.

Hell, I'm not worried.
I'm just a bit disappointed because I had always assumed that I was invulnerable, sort of an X-man in normal clothes.

I do have a strategy though.
If I get a bad diagnosis in-writing, I'll start calling all the attractive females I know, show them a copy of the letter and tell them how they can make a dying man's last days happier.
I wonder if there is combination of codeine and viagra available?

 

[Steve5D]

The day started out OK but tilted downhill just about the time I remembered that today was the day of reckoning with my dermatologist.
After years in the sun, I've developed an alarming, to me not him - he seems to handle the situation very well - profusion of actinic keratoses. Although these aren't really visible except to dermatologists and my wife (who knows the family income gets reduced if I die), I am always encouraged to have these treated so that the perfection of my ruggedly handsome face is never less than optimal.

In March and June I had a couple of treatments that involved someone daubing a sensitizing-solution on my face after which I get exposed to a high level of light at specific wavelengths. If you care to experience what that is like, an equivalent feeling can be achieved by spraying one's face with a thin layer of cooking oil and then positioning one's face really close to hot broiler coils. They do insist you wear goggles, though.

The dermatologist, who said I reminded him of a teacher he once had, said that those treatments weren't totally effective so now we go to steps 2 and 3. He did mention, with what I thought was a remarkably ambiguous expression, that he hoped we wouldn't have to go to step 4 because, as he said, 'that makes a real mess and we'll only talk about that later - if we have to'

He gave me quite a lovely brochure about step 3, a multi-page, four color brochure which signals that the medicine is expensive.
Inside there was calming text, explaining just how wonderful the medicine and then, in the spirit of getting the patient ready, were pictures of how patients' skin look 4 days after treatment, 7 days, 14 days and 29 days. I looked with marked dismay at the row marked 'mild reaction', forced myself to look at the pictures in the row labelled 'medium reaction' but, in an example of how one's brain responds to scenes of horror that the mind can't deal with, didn't see the row marked,'severe.'

Don't worry he said, 'a severe reaction occurs much less often than the others. I've only seen a couple of those this year.' Wouldn't that mean that one is about due, I thought.

Today, he said, for step 2, we will freeze a bunch of those spots and he proceeded to hose my face down with liquid nitrogen for an hour or so. Touch the end of a lit cigarette. Repeatedly. There, that's the feeling.

So I drove the 30 minutes home trying not to cry and now I just have a week to heal before I do step 3, assured by the 4 color brochure that next week there is only a minor chance my face will look like I had picked up a flamethrower rather than a razor to shave and hadn't noticed the mistake until I was through with my entire face. Not that bad.

But, after talking with Mr. Percocet, things don't seem so bad.

We've locked horns on many occasions, you and me.

Get this stuff taken are of, and get better, so that we might continue...

 

[PixelRabbit]

Sending cool and healing thoughts your way Lew.

 

[oldhippy]

Lew, wishing you the best. I've had the nitro gun. Was O.K. Until my question about the growth on my back was answered. He said you got a barnacle there. I know I'm X navy. But never thought we grew barnacles. Ed

 

[pixmedic]

I think you have far too many pictures left to take to worry about retiring now Lew.
do what you gotta do, and get back to snapping photos!

 

[The_Traveler]

Just to put a little balance in the issue.
My son called and sent a picture of a particular disgusting example of what I have.
Mine are, luckily enough, just virtually invisible roughened patches of skin that could easily pass for dry skin -with the exception that they can eventually turn into disgusting pits of rotting cancerous goo if I left them alone.

I am not in any danger, I am only irritated that this magnificent body and its covering organ - skin is an organ - has betrayed me once again.
But the treatment does give me the excuse to take some Percocet and dream just like Thomas De Quincey.

 

[terri]

I'm just a bit disappointed because I had always assumed that I was invulnerable, sort of an X-man in normal clothes.

It's the annoying obligation of doctors to explain otherwise to us. :razz:

Here's hoping you will get the last laugh by responding the way a near-invulnerable, sort of an X-man in normal clothes ought to.