Will that be one scoop or two...

Well, just back from my appointment with the surgeon. You know, I have always been impressed with the amount of small tools dentists seem to have. As a person who has experienced dentists from both a drilling/filling perspective, and a tooth-pulling perspective, it always amazed me that no matter what the condition of a particular tooth, there always seemed to be, somewhere, just THE right tool or jig for the situation at hand.

Now, so it seems, the same can be said for surgeons doing small surgery. Here I am, coaxed once more into an examination room by an over-bustled nurse and instructed to lay on the table. She gingerly removes the bandages and packing, takes a quick look and says "I'll go get the Doctor", whereupon she exits stage left. Hmmmm, thinks I, where is she off to - I mean I did have an appointment - you know what those are - definite times set for you to show up and wait for an indeterminate time for the person with whom the appointment was made to show up at HIS leisure and convenience.

Enter (after what really was not an unreasonable time) the Doctor. Grabs a set of tweezers (or some similar devilish instrument) and starts probing and digging - so much so that my dear wife, leaning in for a closer examination of the wound actually halts the doctor from digging. He pauses, just for a moment, as if to let my wife satisfy her curiosity. He then, once she has backed off, resumes his digging and scraping and jabbing, cheerfully pronouncing (I presume to my wife) the neat stuff he is dragging out of the wound. "Piece of gauze... necrotic tissue... hmmm, an old piece of vein... (I must confess that at the last one, I kinda' wondered if I wouldn't be needing that vein to help circulate blood, or if that was old school thinking) more tissue." He stops. Takes a look around the room. Rummages in a drawer here and there. Checks the cart with all the bandages and misc. stuff. Thinks for the merest of seconds. "Be right back", he says and exits stage left.

My wife is vociferous. "You wouldn't believe what he is doing! Why aren't you screaming/writhing/rolling in pain!!!??? You should see what he dug out of there!!! "

Enter the doctor, holding a several inches long, skinny instrument in his hand. "Got it", he says with no further explanation and starts to really dig into the wound, seemingly copious amounts now of whatever's coming out. I can see it in my wide-eyed wife's expression - an absolute fascination with this new "tool" the doc is using. He finishes. Packs the wound, puts a bandage over it. States "See me in two weeks", and leaves.

My wife, still wide-eyed, says, "That was an ice cream scoop he used on you, only smaller!! More like a melon-baller!! But shaped like an ice-cream scoop." She seems suitably impressed. "He went all the way around - top, bottom, sides - DIDN'T IT HURT???" Well, yeah, especially when he went deep down toward the knee - didn't you see my other leg doing its rattle/shake & roll, my eyes rolled back so far I could see (as a newfie would say) me very own arse, and hear my poor teeth (only a very few left now) grinding and wishing to be awash in pain-killers (liquid kind, from the LCBO.)

I don't know what impressed my wife more - that I wasn't (externally) screaming, or the sight of a small itsy-bitsy teeney-weeney ice-cream scoop.

The only other news is that now apparently the picture previously posted is out of date. According to my wife, the hole is now 25% bigger 'n better.

And no ice-cream in sight...

* sigh *