It's probably time to give an update on what's been happening with my face since the surgery. The process was actually done in 2 parts. I went to Salt Lake one day and through the University of Utah's dermatology department, had a Mohs procedure at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. For those of you unfamiliar with this process, they lay you back in a padded chair, draw dots on your face, numb you up, and then take a slice of your face, which they then look at under a microscope. The hope is that they get all the cancer cells with that slice, but it takes about 2 hours to do some special staining and cutting of the tissue to check that.

Wouldn't you know, that the staining didn't work the first time around, so they wanted to repeat the process on the tissue sample they had. They sent my husband and I to get some lunch, told us to go visit our daughter and the babies, which we did, and if they needed me to come back, they'd let me know. Thankfully, when I got the phone call, it was to say that all the margins of the sample were clear and we could go home. This is what I looked like after that experience, and no offense to the cute little tech who put the dressing on my face, but eyeballs don't tolerate tape on them very well. I'm lucky that I have an eyeball man that lives at my house, so he took all the gauze apart and put it back together so it wasn't rubbing my eye. It was hard because they slice they took was pretty darn close to my lower eyelid.

The second part of this adventure took place 2 days later, when the oculoplastic surgeon's office had me come in fasting for surgery at the university's Moran Eye Center at 12:45 for a surgery that didn't start until oh, about 5:00. The interesting thing about this surgery process is that I was in an operating room, having my face worked on for about an hour, with very, and I do mean very, minimal sedation....like a whiff of sedation while they numbed my eye....just barely enough that I didn't quite care that they were stabbing me and injecting that stinging Lidocaine, and then IV Tylenol throughout the rest of the surgery. I. Did. NOT. Like. It. I heard every scrape reverberate through my head, felt the tug and pull of every stitch, and even though the skin was numb, felt the pull and heard the rasp of the scissors cutting the graft from behind my ear. I'm honestly not sure what the reasoning behind this was and I really just wanted to be under enough not to experience it. I really like my surgeon and I'm very pleased with how things are going post-op, but the awake OR experience was really not my favorite. I had this shield for the first 24 hours, and then when I slept after that until the stitches came out.

This is what was under the shield. It's a compression dressing that kept pressure on the graft they sewed to my face to encourage it to "take." If you get a lot of blood accumulation under the graft, it might not adhere well. You can see the dressing was quite literally sewn to my face. Big stitches coming up to my forehead to keep the pressure on. The outside half of my eyelid was also sewn shut. It was itchy and uncomfortable. My brother said it looked like I had a cocoon sewn to my face and he was sure a butterfly was in there desperately trying to get out. You can see another incision on the left there by my hairline. That was where they took the "control" section of skin for comparison when they did the Mohs.

The stitches for the compression dressing came out about 5 days later. A lot of swelling and bruising, but the majority of the graft looked nice and pink, which was the goal. The scab you see on the edge of the graft closest to my nose was a little blood that was under just that end point of the graft. Not totally perfect, but good enough that the eyeball men in my life would check me frequently and both say, "Looks good" or "It looks how it's supposed to look." I was grateful for the fairly constant feedback. Because of the size of the graft, and because the Mohs took a bite out of the orbicularis oculi muscle, which is the muscle that closes the eyelids, my surgeon made an additional incision in the lateral corner of my eye and tightened up the tendon that holds the eyelid. That way, the loss of muscle combined with the weight of the graft wouldn't cause my eyelid to roll outward. The biggest chore after surgery has been to keep the graft moisturized and soft, and to massage it to keep it pliable as it heals.

And here I am almost 5 weeks post op. My husband took out the stitches behind my ear about a week ago, so that's the last of the foreign stuff on me. I can't say it's been the most pleasant experience of my life. I've been living with the diagnosis since the second week of January, and have been moving through the treatment process ever since. What I am grateful for, is the medical science and knowledge that exists so it could be treated, skilled doctors both here where I live and in Salt Lake, and a supportive family that listened when I needed to just talk about how I was feeling, and then cheered for me and gave me encouragement. Some of them drew me pictures "to help me be brave" when I was headed for surgery. I got lots of phone calls and FaceTimes those first few days after surgery checking on me, and even the funny comments from grandkids...."That looks......strange on you." It all helped me not take myself too seriously and distracted me from the pain and/or itching that was going on, and I am grateful.
I've begun the lovely process of full body checks. Those will happen every 6 months for a year and then every year thereafter. I told my dermatologist that I was a little paranoid about every spot I have these days. His response? "You should be. You have the perfect trifecta.....you've already grown a melanoma, you're fair skinned, and you grew up in the 60's and 70's and literally tried to bake yourself. Why do you even bother to go outside?" Wear your sunscreen. I anticipate this might not be the only time I'll have something cut off. OK, so when I was growing up, we didn't really know a ton about sun damage, but we do now. Protect your skin.