Jeff's Medical and Dental Updates

This has been a morning of temporary symptoms. Firstly, highly uncomfortable feeling in the gut AND very sharp localized pain in my right lower back. So, I was strongly thinking one of the kidney stones had finally been expelled from my right-hand kidney, and I'd have to get myself to Emergency at the nearby hospital. Then the localized pain in the lower back went away and while trying unsuccessfully to initiate a bowel movement I suddenly got a little nauseous. But nothing came up. Went to eat breakfast at usual time, but shortly after starting it, was abruptly very nauseous. Reached a sink in time and vomited. That  got me thinking food poisoning from something I ate yesterday. Then the uncomfortable feeling in the gut just went away while I was trying again to initiate a bowel movement (again unsuccessfully.) So, all in all hoping this was all related to food poisoning, but just to be safe think I'll stay home today.

Very please to learn pathology department had reported the second melanoma excision had been successful,ul at removing all the related cells. Now it's just a matter of waiting for recovery of the suture site, which seems to progressing nicely.

Returned to dermatologist today for a second melanoma excision procedure. The point being getting out any remaining melanoma cells, so this involved a larger area of skin being removed than the first procedure, and hopefully the pathology analysis of what was removed today will confirm that everything has now been removed. As this resulted in a circular wound, the doctor recommended, and performed, what she calls a "pin cushion incision" to close the wound, which will result in a small circular scar, rather than what would be a much more noticeable line scar. I wanted to display an example of this here, but oddly, when I search for "pin cushion incision" (including the quotes) I get no matching results at all. I sent email to the doctor to ask if there is some other term that might provide results. I won't see the actual incision myself until tomorrow morning, when I will be able to remove the initial bandage and dressing before I shower. UPDATE: "We...

Dermatologist called to discuss the pathology results of the biopsies she took last Friday. The one on the leg and the one on the face were very minor and nothing to worry about. The one that had been growing out of the right outer ear was confirmed to have been a squamous cell carcinoma; the results were it had been caught early and wholly extracted, and it was definitely very preferable that it had been growing entirely outward, rather than inward. The result for the one on the neck is more problematic. It was a fairly minor melanoma, BUT the pathologist found not all edges of it had been removed. So I will have to go back in for office-based surgery to get all the edges out. Fortunately I had already arranged for taking days off work next week Monday through Thursday, and she had a slot available next Wednesday, so went ahead and made that appointment.

It's hard to visually discern with it being on one side of my neck and below the ear, but I realized the biopsy wound for the hopefully non-agressive melanoma actually is healing quite nicely. So I am wearing no bandages while at work, but will for a while yet wear a couple during sleeping just to be safe.

About the biopsies the dermatologist took last Friday: Expecting the pathology department analysis results anytime from this Friday on. But the wound for the doctor tenatively identified as a non-agressive melanoma is going to be taking quite a while to fully heal up, as that site is roughly the size of my thumb print. But at least the other three biopsy wounds are healing nicely. I'm still wearing a bandage for the one on an outer ear; I'm surprised there have been no comments on that at work, but I guess everyone is just being polite.

Have seen the dermatologist I had mentioned earlier. The two most serious items I was concerned with, the growth on an outer ear, and what I have been thinking of as an "age spot" on my neck were both tentatively identified by eyeball examination as cancerous. She said the growth appeared to be squamous cell, and the spot appeared to be non-aggressive melanoma. (Big sigh.) She also identified two much smaller points as being of concern, and took biopsy samples of all four, which included full removal of all. The pathology department should get back to her in one to two weeks with analysis, and obviously we would go from there. She had me make an appointment for another general check in 3 months. In the meantime I have instructions on care for the biopsy sites. Obviously I need to apply myself to better sun screening practices! One more thing: DO NOT do Google image searches for "squamous cell" and "melanoma," as I just did. O.M.G.

Occurred to me that to be more complete with this history, I should mention the couple other surgeries I've had in addition to cardiac ablation. First, in childhood (no recollection of my age at the time) I had an adenoidectomy. Just the adenoids were removed. I think my tonsils have always been fine. Second: Towards end of 2016 my gall bladder was removed. My first symptom of something being wrong with it was having pain in one chest location only when I inhaled. As this was happening on a Saturday, I went to urgent care. They sent me to hospital radiology department for immediate imaging, where it was found the gall bladder was full of stones. Surgery was done the same day, during which it was found the gall bladder also had a major infection. I don't recall the explanation, but I was told in recovery that the bladder could not be removed while it was infected, so I was put on a strong antibiotic, AND an external drain for the gall fluid was installed during the operati...

Thinking the dermatologist during my appointment may bring up the possibility of an eventual tummy tuck. This is because it turns out the low oxalate diet, though of course not meant for that purpose, nicely drives weight loss. I've so far lost at least 15 pounds, and have significant loose skin folds along my waist, since of course I'm too old for the skin to retreat as the pounds retreat! No idea if my insurance would even pay for a tummy tuck, but no need to worry about that now.

I really have just one major dental condition, so will get that out of the way before proceeding with the various medical situations. DENTAL: The one major dental condition is root resorption. This is basically where the roots of a tooth progressively deteriorate to the point the tooth has to be extracted. Which leaves the patient with deciding how to proceed with dealing with the absent tooth: implant or denture. The situation for me is that my dentist says I have the worst case of root resorption he has ever seen. (Lucky me.) It is impossible to say just what triggered this, but there is suspicion about the orthodontia I received in my early teenage years, especially as the orthodontist was unable to get the jaws lined up so that upper and lower teeth properly meet up. So, I have multiple implants. MEDICAL: Oh, where to start... ATRIAL FILBRILLATION. (aka afib) This was discovered in January 2015 after I experienced bad chest pains and uncomfortableness, and was hospitalize...

It was suggested I use a blog in place of my admittedly frequent emails to family and others about my many medical and dental situations. I had previously blogged about other things, but let that go idle when I moved to using social media, especially Twitter. So, I thought about using a second Twitter account for this purpose, but that requires a second email account (which I do have, but prefer not to use at all) or using shenanigans which only apply if your primary email account is on Gmail, which does not apply for me. So, I am going to try reviving this Blogger account and start a new blog. Medical/dental overview up next.