MOHS SURGERY: WHAT TO EXPECT, HOW TO REACT

Mohs surgery is another way of saying: “WTF just happened to my face?”

Everyone I’ve talked to has had a similar reaction to this: “I wasn’t expecting anything so dramatic.”

Is that a ‘normal’ reaction? Based on experience, I say it is. Here’s why:

I went from a small dot of a skin irregularity on my face, to a six inch scar and thirty-five stitches. It was shocking.

Mohs surgery was shocking in the same way child birth was shocking. Bear with me here, just don’t bear down.

My wife the mid-wife naturopath has delivered more than three hundred babies, home birthed babies.

This wasn’t some kind of red flag when we were dating, and not a topic once we decided to get married. I didn’t bring it up and she thought I had already moved past the home birth question.

Right after we learned we would be parents, I asked which hospital she was thinking of. Turned out she wasn’t thinking of any hospital.

“I deliver babies at home for others and I think we should do the same. You know, practice what I preach,” she said.

I ignored the birth process information ahead of time so I’d be shocked when it happened, then deal with the shock. What I didn’t expect was dealing with my mom, too.

Mom called during labor with, “Honey, don’t you think you’d be better off in a hospital?”

I said, “Between you and I, Ma, I agree. I would be better off in a hospital, but Elaine might be disappointed if I left now.”

Mohs Surgery Surprise

So I had a small mole I monitored for stuff you monitor moles for.

I had it looked at and declined treatment since it was so insignificant. After the last change, I signed up for mohs surgery.

Did I do any research? About as much as I did for home birth. What I did do was make a request of the staff and doctor. It was more a question than request.

“Are any of you old enough to remember the Beatles?” I asked them.

One of them gave me an ‘are you kidding me’ look, and said, “Yes. Of course? I remember the Beatles.”

I was in the chair, all set for the knife, but kept talking.

“That’s good, then you also remember who was called ‘the cute one?'”

“The cute one?”

“Yes,” I said. “One of them was the cute Beatle. It was Paul. He was the cute one. The reason it’s important now is that I’m the cute one in my band, and I want to stay cute.”

If you google mohs surgery you’ll see what it looks like, so I’ll spare you my personal gore. I had an early appointment so not too many people were in the waiting room.

When I came out after the first part I had a big bandage strapped to the side of my face called a compression bandage. About six others were in the room then with similar bandages. It looked like a scene from the old M.A.S.H. TV show.

I talked to another man while I waited for lab results and watched blood trickle down his neck.

“I think you’ve sprung a leak,” I said.

“A what? You’ll have to speak up with this bandage over my ear,” he said.

“You’re bleeding. Probably nothing,” I said in a calm voice.

That’s when the man’s wife took over and he got hustled back to the surgery rooms.

After the next session of the morning, I left the building wearing my glasses over the massive lumpy bandage for an ‘Invisible Man’ look. I checked for bleeding in the mirror.

I didn’t come home looking very cute, but if you haven’t figured it out from reading other blog posts here, I’m a trooper.

Wife and I had plans with our boys the next night, movie plans that took three weeks to work out. Now I’ve got one purple eye swollen shut with a huge dark sack of blood under it, along with a bandage covering half my face.

What movie did we see? 1917, and half the cast had head wound bandages. There I was, a former Army medic wrapped up in head wound stuff, watching a movie about the British Army suffering through WWI.

Since I had my squad with me on movie patrol, I couldn’t have been in a better place.