Chopping me down:

Three doctor visits in one day, in the middle of a nasty snowstorm.  Icky poo.  And lots of slicing and dicing, or plans for same.  Details within. 

Number one was at the local hospital for extra work on the ‘wound’ on my foot; the podiatrist, a very fun guy named Dr. Spock, carved the hell out of my foot, exposing the underlying plantar wart.  He said it was healing up well, but it bled all over the place and was something of a mess by the evening.  Susan (who cleaned up up and rebandaged it tonight) said that he’d done a good deal of digging out work, which must be why it hurts like hell right now.

Next, a dash to the nearest Chicago El stop in the near-in-suburbs through a nasty snowstorm (courtesy of my mother-in-law, PBUH) and a ride into the city near my office, and then a bus ride to Northwestern Hospital.  (I guess I’m going to have to get used to this deal…)   The doctors offices there are split up in huge towers near the downtown of Chicago, and the next two visits were at 1 pm (dermatologist) and 2:45 (ENT) in different towers.

The dermatologist was going to town on me, too.  My CLL doc had referred me over there for mole-removal and a general check for odd skin stuff, and the dermatologist lopped off two moles from my face (which had been around since babyhood and were annoying) and one from my back.  He said he was sending in all three to be checked out and biopsied; the face ones he was sure were OK, and he wasn’t sure about the back one, but thought it would turn out OK, but he wanted to be careful.

So that took some time, and while it didn’t hurt much at the time, the one on the back required a stitch, and man, it hurts right now.  All three bled like mad.  My first reaction when I head the offer to get rid of the moles was ‘Mere is going to freak; she’s so used to those facial odditites…’.  I was right – she did.

The ENT was moderately gruff and to the point.  He wanted an actual copy of the scans from the MRI this friday.  He was going to resection out a big chunk of the parotid – less than what the Loyola ENTs had done, but still sizable.  This will require surgery under anesthesia, and an overnight hospital stay. (Joy oh joy.)   Hopefully, the areas that the CLL doc wanted scanned will cover what the ENT wants, or I may have to go back.  Icky.

I had to go through some more tests for pre-surgery – an EKG and another blood draw.  Man, my hands are really bruised to hell and gone from all the draws and IVs and whatnot….the pre-surgical stuff stated that I had to abstain from any of the pain-killers that thin the blood for the next two weeks (which apparently include Aleve, dammit).   Not fun, not at all.

So things wander forward.  I’m not looking forward to the chopping-up, of course.  Not at all.