A rather large and nasty skin cancer sprang up on the heel of my right foot -- a difficult place for surgery. It was getting sore, however, so it had to go. Dr. Sandy had a close look at it and thought it would need a graft. I tend to lose grafts however so that was no solution.
She then told me that there was only one plastic surgeon who could probably deal with the problem without a graft: Dr. D.
Unfortunately however I already knew Dr. D. well. He is undoubtedly a skilled plastic surgeon but two of his previous surgeries on me started to bleed shortly thereafter. Some bleeding was no problem but this was uncontrolled bleeding -- which is distinctly worrisome
Not long ago, he did an excision on my left ear only for me to wake up next morning with blood all over my pillow. Fortunately, Anne was staying over that night so I had some help and after a couple of false starts I got Dr Templeman onto the job. He fixed it with Anne assisting. But we had a distressing morning first.
So I was reluctant to go under the knife with Dr D. again. But Sandy gave him a big wrap as being good with my latest problem so I arranged to go to him. But, being super-freaky about bleeding, I wanted to do all I could to prevent that. And I had a lot of help. Sandy offered to assist Dr D. on the day and Jenny came into theatre to observe and assist in any way she could. So in addition to Dr D. I had two ladies with me in theatre supporting me. I guess I am at times a rather spoilt man. The surgery was an early one, starting at 7:30am.
Dr D. was happy to share his knowledge so not only explained his procedures to Sandy but also allowed Jenny to observe closely. So my procedure was well-supervised.
When the bandage was finally on, the next crucial step had arrived: putting minimal stress on the wound to prevent bleeding. I had to keep my foot up as much as possible. With Jenny's help I managed it -- staying in bed for the rest of the morning and doing only a bare minimum of walking about thereafter.
It seems to have worked. It is early Saturday morning as I write this and there has been no bleeding and no pain. So I think I am out of the woods. Jenny stayed overnight and Anne is due here at 9am so I will have backup if a problem does emerge.
TUESDAY UPDATE (16th): I got the pathology results today: BCC fully excised. Excellent.
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