A trying couple of days

I had a wog last week which had just cleared up when I went in for surgery this week. Skin cancers pop up on me rather regularly.  And the ones that look like expanding have to be killed some way -- by freezing or excision.  I had a rather pesky crop recently.  So this time getting rid of them took two days -- at an overall cost of $7,000.00.  So that is going to restrict my spending in other directions.  The time could come when I am spending all my spare cash on surgery.  I will however look at options for cheaper treatment.

Included this time was a Moh's procedure -- where the extent of the cancer is not clear so they have to keep cutting until the microscope gives the all clear.  It's never pleasant.  It is so time consuming that they don't stitch you up same day.  You have to go home with a gaping wound that they stitch up the next day. Wednesday's procedure  removed a big cancer on my chest plus a smaller one nearby.

So on Thursday, Anne drove me out to Northwest private hospital for both the Moh's repair and an excision on my ankle.  The ankle excision was expected to be a bit big, requiring a skin graft to put it back together. They have good grafting facilities at Northwest.  And as it turned out, the gap created by the Moh's procedure also required a graft.  So I came home very patched up.

As expected, I had to be very careful about walking in order not to flex too much the graft on my ankle. So I bought some crutches to get around on for a few days.

An unforeseen problem is that the big graft on my chest seems to have got infected. I always seem to have some nasty skin bugs -- Staphylococcus Aureus or "Golden Staph" -- on my skin waiting to pounce on a surgical site so I have been subjected to infections of wounds for some years now.  On a couple of occasions I have had to go into hospital and be put on a Vancomycin drip for a couple of days.  So that may be coming up again.

In the meanwhile I am on high doses of both Clindamycin and Dicloxacillin in an endeavour to close down the infection.  But I am in a rather bad way for a while: I have a rather painful chest wound that stings me when I move and I can't walk any distance.  Fortunately Anne has moved in to look after me. She is doing well.  She is a nurse by profession. But it will be a few days yet before I can move about freely.