You'd Never Guess...

...by looking at my picture that I had a minor procedure done at the dermatologist today. That bandage is huge! By the way, those are my new reading glasses.

I never had any major skin problems growing up -- except for the occasional sunburn. I didn't have to deal with acne issues. Quite a while ago I had a small black spot on my cheek that I thought was maybe an ingrown whisker. I was at the dermatologist for something else and had him look at it. Nope, it was a blackhead. Go figure. He cleaned it up and warned me this was a large pore and that it could possibly happen again. Sure enough, as predicted, it did. I went back a few months ago and he cleaned it up again and suggested just taking out the pore to eliminate the problem. He takes a punch biopsy and puts a couple stitches in to close it up. Today was the big day.

The worst part was the injection of the local anesthetic. "OK, you'll feel a little stick" said the nurse. Yeah, when you hear that you know they're trying to downplay the stick. The problem I discovered is the nerve that feeds that area fans out so she had to move the needle around to make several "little stick" injections. That gets old pretty fast. After a couple minutes she checked the skin with a needle to make sure everything was numb. I still felt the needle in a couple spots so she made a second round of injections. Even after working that in, one spot just wasn't getting the drug. So yes, you guessed it, another "little stick" series of anesthetic injections. The nerves in your face are pretty sensitive!

After that, the rest was just a little pushing for the biopsy and some pulling for the stitches. No discomfort though. I have to wear this pressure bandage for a day and then keep changing things until next Wednesday when the stitches come out.