Friday, March 25, 2016

Follow ups and follow ups never end.

Archived Photo

One thing seems to keep leading to another.  We finally got seen by the surgeon who would do the 'eyelid' lift to increase Rich's vision.

After examining him and then calling in another doctor, the decided they wouldn't do any eye surgery until he saw Dermatology.  They poked and prodded around his face and asked many questions.
History of skin cancer? 
NO.
Anyone in the family have skin cancer?
NO.
A lot of sun exposure as a child?
YES.
Chemical exposures?
YES.

"We can't do the eye lid surgery until after dermatology does surgery on these multiple areas."
The doctors poked on his face some more and then their fingers brushed his forehead. 
"We may have to use all this nice excess skin to make skin grafts to cover up scarring. Dermatology will use the Moh's Method to take out the lesions and depending on how deep they are well, that will determine the scarring."

Rich shrugged.  I cringed.  I'd seen photos of the Moh's Method and well, it was not pretty but usually it healed up quite nicely.  Multiple spots? To not do surgery was inviting the cancer to spread and kill him.
I wondered how long had those spots been there?  Of course it wasn't something that a normal person would recognize as cancerous.
Cancer.
Hate hate that word.

We ended this appointment with a promise that Dermatology or Derm, would call and set up an appointment.

We are now one year an 12 days out of the Throat Cancer diagnosis.
More on that later.