Another day, another doctor’s appointment. Today it was Chuck’s turn. He had a date with the dermatologist: the removal of a basal cell on his neck – weirdly close to where mine was (yikes, it’s catching!). I went with him for moral support, and to drive him home if he didn’t feel up to it.

The doctor is a really cool guy, and a super surgeon. He’d be a great plastic surgeon if only it weren’t for these crazy scruples he has about saving lives. Anyway, when the nurse came in we immediately started swapping gross-out stories of injuries we have suffered and seen. The doctor came in on us and joined in and soon topped us all with a truly awful tale of a guy who blew his head off (apparently quite literally) when he stuck an M-80 firecracker in his mouth and it accidentally went off. These were clearly our kind of people!

When it came time to start cutting, I whipped out my Razr phone and asked if I could take photos. The doc was fine with it, so I snapped away (why I don’t come better prepared to these events, I don’t know). They took a surprisingly big chunk out of Chuck’s neck (about a tablespoon, as best as I could tell) and left him with an incision about two inches long. All in all, I felt very CSI-ish watching and didn’t get at all queasy. There was actually very little blood. Once the basal cell and surrounding tissue was removed there was a fairly cavernous gap in Chuck’s neck. I pondered how the doctor would take care of it, but needn’t have worried. In a series of stitches that would make Betsy Ross proud, the doc sewed Chuck up so neatly that by the end it looked more like a scratch than an incision. He goes back in 10 days to have the stitches removed. There is no way in HELL that I am even contemplating taking them out for him!!

Mo’ better pics of the goings on here. Warning: these pictures do contain images that may be unsettling to wimpy cowards and yellow-bellied wusses. I’m just saying.