Thursday, January 26, 2023

Keeping me in Stitches

This morning I made an unplanned visit to the plastic surgeon. The smaller of the two basal cell surgical spots in my scalp had begun to bleed. As I am 8 weeks post surgery, this is really surprising. The wounds had been healing nicely, and I even colored my hair with no problem a couple weeks ago. The only thing that had been bothering me was the dissolvable stitches that were popping up through my scalp.

I called the office when I noticed the discharge, and they told me to come right in. The technician clipped the stitches, and then took a scraping of the head wound. It will be sent to the lab to check for signs of infection. When the doctor was able to see me, he cleaned the wound up but didn't seem overly concerned. He said that because of my hair, it's likely that one of the hair follicles formed a pustule due to the dissolvable stitches and that it has erupted. He gave me a prescription for a topical antibiotic to put on the wound, but didn't want to start me on an oral antibiotic until the lab results come back. That might not be until next week, so I'm sure that's why he went ahead with a topical in the meantime.

By the time I got home, the wound was bleeding quite a bit. I know that head wounds have a tendency to do that. So I put a cold compress on it until it slowed, and then put an over the counter ointment on it to help stop the bleeding until my prescription is ready. This is the first time in the 15 skin cancers that I've had removed that there has been an issue, so I guess I can't complain. Hopefully the lab result is negative, and the topical ointment does the trick. 

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