The C-word

One and a half weeks ago Dex had the minor surgery to remove the growth on his thumb. For a 10 minute actual operation, we were at the hospital for five hours. This included check-in, waiting to be called to the OR, putting him under (which I got to witness), the operation, and then waiting for him to wake up. Dex was very brave and didn't cry once. Duncan and I were very brave too, not realizing how emotional the whole event was until after the fact, when we found ourselves exhausted. Since then, we've been tending to his wound with daily applications of polysporin and not two, but three bandaides.

Yesterday we (me and the three boys) went back to The Plastic Surgeon for Dex's one week post-op check-up. She spent the first little bit cleaning up the wound and removing the last of the dissolving stitches. As she was finishing up, I asked "So, did they do a biopsy?" fully expecting her to report a confirmation of the "hari-horrible-itis." Instead, she grabbed the pathology report and came in close: a doctor's way of saying "you're going to need to sit down for this."

"It's not what I expected," she said. Okay. "It's a junctional spitz nevus." Okay. "And there is some controversy about it's diagnosis. It could be a low-grade melanoma. I've referred him to a dermatologist to see how she thinks we should proceed. The question is whether or not we should biopsy his lymph nodes."

Melanoma. The C-word. Holy FUCK.

"Don't freak out Yet" she said.

So, I took the boys for sundaes and tried not to freak out.