Squealing Like a Stuck Pig; or, Why to Never Scrimp on Band-Aids

I surely did not mean to start my first blog post as a complaint letter to the powers that be, but I just as surely did not mean to sign myself over to The Devil, D.D.S. Seeing as how I just got insurance, but not wanting to miss work for too many days, I just took one day off and did it all. Poor planning, I see in hindsight.

How many people are familiar with the concept of dental "deep-cleaning"? I would hazard a guess at "only people in metropolitan areas". Being not originally from such, I was thinking "ooh... deep cleaning... like a deep tissue massage for my teeth..." What I actually got was 14 shots of Novocaine to the mouth with one of those needles that looks ready to tranquilize a buffalo. Luckily, the news was on the TV above my head, so I could trivialize my personal trauma in comparison to someone who, I don't know, got HACKED TO PIECES on a bus. I left The Devil's office with a numb mouth and some serious thoughts that I may have just been had.

With said numb mouth (not front of lips, however), I drove to my next appointment, the dermatologist. After browsing through the pages of Cheerleader Magazine in the lobby, the doctor asks me what is my concern. I have a lot of spots. I just want to make sure that none of these spots invade. He asked which ones I was concerned most about, so I pointed out the four most scary ones. At the sight of my back, the kind doctor sort of fell off the table a little and said "Whoa... um... ALL of your moles are abnormal and suspicious". I know. Meanwhile, in my head I'm forming sharp and witty retorts to his comments, while out of my still thick-tongued mouth fall the words "dith wung yootht to be two, but now ith lake one". So he drew cross hairs on my most-wanted list of perpetrators, including one on my forehead that I wish I had a picture of, and his nurse injected them with numb, and he sliced them off for further review. I'll know in three weeks, about the amount of time to heal three grievous wounds and one minor one. P.S. electrocauterization.

Now, my poor husband has to apply ointment and bandaids to me every night and morning, because a.) I'm too much of a weenie to do it myself, and b.) I can't reach the one on my spine. I had purchased some cheapo plastic bandages not too long ago, thinking only of using them for blister protection and the occasional paper cut, which is the most bloody damage I generally do to myself. Now, these bandages are not made to stretch. Apparently not to protect, either, because the little "non-stick" part of the pad ends up sticking to my grievous wounds every time. And pulling out my back hairs. AND, the most grievous of all, the one on my spine, has to have the bandaid essentially stuck to the muscles on either side, thusly limiting my range of movement with a piece of cheap plastic the size of my flat thumb. Doctors should get in on this... if you don't want your patient to twist laterally or bend over at all, simply tape their lats together with tiny pieces of "flesh-tone" tape.