Bob the Blob

One of the joys of getting older is the funky things your body starts doing. I just had a cyst removed from my eyebrow, Bob the Blob, and apparently this is a post-menopause thing. Your body starts collecting stuff in places it never did before (like, apparently, on your eyebrows) and getting rid of stuff that was actually quite useful (like bone mass and muscle mass).

The blob started in March, and it’s taken me this long to get it removed. This is part of that awesome process of going to see a generalist, who can’t actually do anything, in order to be referred to a specialist, who also can’t operate right away and is too busy to see you for many weeks.

It would have been sesame seed sized if I could have gotten it out right away. Bob was a growing boy, and was finally the size of a small cherry by the time it came out. Instead of having a little slit and maybe a steri-strip, it’s now looks like I got in a fight, and lost, and required 4-5 stitches.

I’m still happy it’s out, though. Bob was heavy and fell in my eye at the end of the day (I guess when my older skin got tired of fighting gravity). I’d tape it up and it looked like I was trying to go cheap on plastic surgery. “No need to have a face lift, look! Just tape your face back, it looks fiiiiiiine!”

I also looked like I was permanently winking at people, which was probably a bit creepy. It wasn’t as bad at the time the mosquito netting fell in my face in the night (in a tropical country) and I wound up being eaten alive by mosquitos. That time, I scared children on the streets. My face was all puffy and turned into a uni-bite that I wanted to scratch with both my hands. I also got malaria. So better than that. I just look a bit like Bride of Frankenstein.

My family has a few folks in the medical profession, and in general we do well with other people’s blood (I even learned phlebotomy at one point and got quite good at taking blood.) However, with my own blood, I once famously cut my finger, saw the blood, and passed out on the floor. I had a miniscule band-aid on my finger and huge concussion on my head. Today, with my eye looking half butchered, I look in the mirror and need to sit down on the floor before I go under.

Last night, it hurt quite a bit and leaked blood, which is always a bit disconcerting. I packed on cotton to keep from dripping blood on stuff, put an ice pack on my eye, made a cup of tea, sat Foro down next to me on the couch and watched Rick and Morty.