2017—Cancer!

…Previous medical event: 2016—Cataract: Left Eye

It was just an itchy spot on my left ankle, but it hung on for months and became crusty. So, I showed it to Dr Mike and he recommended a steroid cream. That cleared up the crustiness, revealing a smooth, dime-sized lump that had apparently been hiding there for a long time.

So I took it to Dr Brandon Nickle, dermatologist, who biopsied it, whereupon I promptly became, to my distress, a cancer patient. Turns out the thing was a squamous-cell carcinoma, which had to be excised. Not life-threatening, but nonetheless cancerous.

The next step, in the hands of Dr Michael Martineau, was what they call a MOHS* procedure, in which he cut the thing out and then left me anesthetized, locally, while he checked it under the microscope. If that had revealed residual nasty cells, he would have returned and dug deeper, as many times as necessary. In the event, thank the Lord, the first pass got it all, and I went home gratefully, with a bandage on the ankle.

It emerged, though, that the front of the ankle is a fearfully hard place to get a deep cut to heal up, what with the skin’s tightness in that vicinity. Moreover, the wound also developed a stubborn infection, and after several weekly visits to apply antibiotics and fresh bandages, the dermatology department threw up its hands and referred me to Dr Douglas Barney and his Hyperbaric and Wound Center at Davis Hospital.

My case never escalated to their hyperbaric chamber, but Brittany, Dr Barney’s charming young associate, applied all the tricks of their trade, twice a week, including some marvelous honey, brought all the way from New Zealand. When I first visited them on the 1st of February, my wound looked like this:

The white circumferential stuff, they told me, is infection; the scarce, shiny, red patches are where healing has started. After more than a month of trying.

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