Today I had the operation for removal of a growth on my neck to which I referred1 six weeks ago. We arrived at the hospital far too early, and would have arrived even earlier had we taken advantage of a short cut that I wasn't sure about (the 'new' road 16 that surfaces very near the hospital). It was like waiting for an airplane: first we waited for the check-in counter to open, then I checked in, then after another wait, the plastic surgery clinic opened and a nurse checked me, then we waited some more then eventually another nurse called me into surgery.
The operation - if one can call it that - was very similar to all those that I've had before, although this time it seemed to be more involved in that a larger area of skin seemed to be removed. There was cauterisation (creating the smell of burnt flesh) and self-dissolving stitches, followed by the application of a relatively large bandage.
The tissue that was excised was sent to a laboratory within the hospital, and after a wait of nearly two hours, the result arrived: a squamous cell carcinoma had been removed. What's the difference between BCC and SCC?
- Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) arises from basal cells located in the lower part of the epidermis.
- Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC) develops from squamous cells found in the upper layers of the epidermis.
To you and me they're more or less the same. At the moment it's difficult to tilt my head because of the huge bandage, but tomorrow it will come off and life will go back to normal.
Internal links
[1] 2001
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 214 | Hejira | Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell | |
| 425 | Coffee addicts (Millennium trilogy) | Films, Meg Ryan, Steig Larsson, Time traveler's wife | |
| 426 | User defined menus | Programming, Delphi | |
| 1434 | Sleeping deeply | CPAP, MP3, Binaural beats, Sleep | |
| 1548 | Redesigning the 'blogs' program | Programming, Blog manager program |
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