Mole Check Gone Awry

Well, the dermatologist appointment was all very anti-climatic. I got the BOTOX which I'll tell you about tomorrow (complete with pics) but in all the research I did, I failed to read about how it takes 4+ days for the effects to kick in. So I can still lift my brows, damnit!

The very, very, best and most unexpected comic relief came courtesy of my husband. Internet, I wish you could have been there.

Dallas deeply fears most of the medical establishment and consequently, he has to be in pain before he will go see a doctor of any sort. I have to force him to make preventative care appointments including the dentist so getting him to this visit was a major victory in spite of the fact that he bitched himself hoarse. We arrived at the doctor's office and had to wait for a few minutes which was not necessarily a good thing because he was as nervous as a cat and he kept eyeballing the door, exasperating me to no end. I explained to him that this was a dermatologist. Beautiful things happen in this office. He was getting a freaking mole check. How could there possibly be any pain associated with that?

They called us back to our exam room and asked us to don one of those hospital gowns where you can't tell which is the front and which is the back and no matter how you choose to wear it, you still look vaguely ridiculous. This did not go over well with the hubby. He rolled his eyes, made a sour face and shook his head at the inconvenience of it all. Then he complained about how frigid the room was. I have to admit it was pretty chilly. The doctor came in to examine us and she was in a PARKA. I am not kidding.

She can best be described as quiet, gentle, focused and lightning fast. While answering questions, she quickly scoured my skin for anything abnormal and I'm pleased to say that all those Brulee Beach burns of my youth have not shown up in anything ominous so far. Then Dallas hopped up on the exam table and she put him at ease right away by chatting about his accent and his tattoo. Everything was going along quite well and at the end of his exam, she had a good look at the skin tags that ring his neck and plague his armpits. Then she was gone.

Woosh.

And then the room filled with nurses, like something out of Robin Cook's "Coma".

We were both confused until they told us they were there to remove those skin tags. The naked panic on Dallas's face was immediately visible. Neither one of us could recall a concrete moment in our brief conversation with our dermy where Dallas had asked to have them removed. It was all a bit surreal.

"Baby, I didn't set this up," I said, worried that he might think I'd ambushed him. In that frigid, meat locker of a room, Dallas began to sweat.

Oh sweet Jesus, then they went to work.

It was awful and great all at the same time. Dallas has no tolerance for pain and he makes absolutely no apologies. First one of the nurses held his hand as he screwed up his face and began to pant. He let out a little peep of pain and the other nurse turned to me showing the needle THAT SHE HADN'T USED YET.

"Honey, she hasn't touched you yet," I said.

"I know," he said through clenched teeth with eyes jammed shut and beads of sweat COURSING off his forehead. I realized then, that I was witnessing true, unadulterated fear. He had completely psyched himself out.

A third and fourth nurse joined in the fray because they could hear the commotion from outside the room and wanted to lend their assistance. The way it finally turned out was Dallas, with one nurse holding a cold compress to his forehead, another nurse waving her hand in front of him like a palm frond to try to keep him from fainting, a third wielding anesthesia-filled syringe and a pair of scissors, a fourth with a cauterizing gun and me holding his hand.

Internet, believe me when I tell you that I couldn't have written a scene like this if I had tried. The five of us, hovering over my husband commented that this was why MEN ARE NOT ABLE TO GIVE BIRTH. They would never survive it. One nurse, noticing his ink on the soft underside of each arm, pointedly asked him how in the world he had managed to get the tattoos done (lots of alcohol apparently).

By the time it was finished, both armpits had been treated and Dallas was the colour of cement. He politely declined to have the tags removed from his neck. After the nurses left, Dallas got up from the table and in doing so, we discovered that he had sweat through his boxers, his hospital gown and the sanitary liner on the exam table. BUCKETS OF MOISTURE. I spent several minutes picking the saturated bits of paper off his back while giggling hysterically.

He swore.

Later, at home, he turned to me stone faced and said, "They may as well have taken a can of gasoline, poured it on my titty warts (his name for skin tags) and thrown a match on the whole mess because my FUCKING ARMPITS ARE ON FIRE!

You know how it is when you take a male dog to the vet to be neutered and after it's all done, you are never again able to drive by the vet's office without him whimpering in the back seat? I think it will be a frosty day in hell before Dallas ever agrees to another mole check.