Mohs Surgery

I highly recommend sunscreen to everyone with a daily dose of Vitamin D to make up for the sun loss. This morning was the Mohs Surgery to remove the skin cancer from my eye area. From a small dot of a mole that looked nothing like the cancer causing mole photos, I ended up having skin removed from the tear duct to part of the eyelid. The seam of the eyelid! How does that even see enough sun to get cancer?

First up - you get numbed. My dentist can tell you that this takes many attempts as my body processes through the numbing agents quickly. I dislike being numb and it takes many injections to get there. Injections right next to the eye and on the eyelid - not recommended! Ouch.

Since the biopsy was a big chunk of the work, what remained was the rest of the mole and the cancer. I don't know how the cancer cells are mapped but the doctor was confident that there was nothing under my eye which was great news. After slicing off skin for about 45 minutes, I was sent to the waiting room while the cells were looked at under the microscope. If you look next to the bandage on my eyelid, you can see some of the cut. The worst is on the inside part of my eye and it was bleeding away.

After a 45 minutes wait, the doctor called me back in with good news. He had removed all the cancer in one big sweep. Now it was time to decide, eyepatch, stitches, surgical strip pads? How to close the wound. The two doctors agreed on stitches and some big blood absorbing thing to be stuck in the hole in my face. More numbing injections (didn't work, I felt everything) so another round of injections and back in business. The eyelid is covered in some strip and will heal on it's own. No water on face for two day. They let me look at the wound before covering me back up and it was properly swollen and red. No time for a selfie before I was bandaged back up.

Here's teh after. You can see my eyelid swelling up and the red line is the cut along the eyelid. There will be no rubbing that eye for a couple weeks for more! Now I'm home and icepacking it down each hour and on a small dose of pain meds. This hurts! I'm glad it's over and done with. I had good doctors!