In honor of Pamie getting her eye cyst removed, tell us: what sort of weird things have grown on you and been removed?

-- Anonymous, February 25, 2000

Answers

i had a lip biopsy once... imagine a doc straddling in front of you, pulling your wicked numb bottom lip down, then slicing a chunk out. oh yeah, then there's the stitching-up process. nothing like seeing a needle entering your face.

-- Anonymous, February 25, 2000

About 9 years ago I had a reverse root canal. For that, the oral surgeon goes in from the top instead of drilling behind the tooth. Ah, yes. I have a nice scar on my upper gum from that one. I call it my Frankenstein scar.

Last year I had tissue removed from the roof of my mouth to replace gum tissue that had receded. Wow that was fun. I didn't receive enough Novacaine. I felt nearly everything and it seemed as though it went on forever. At least for the reverse root canal I couldn't see what they were doing. During the tissue replacement, I could see the doctor, nurse, and intern smiling as they stared into my very sore mouth. Gah.

I would much rather be knocked out during surgery. I mean, I felt groggy and icky after getting my tonsils removed (at age 21!!!), but at least I didn't feel anything during the surgery.

-- Anonymous, February 25, 2000

I had a tenodesis performed on my left shoulder, to keep it from dislocating. They take a muscle/tendon/whatever that runs up-and-down, right where the front seam is on your t-shirt sleeve, cut the bottom end loose, carve a notch around the upper-arm bone, and tie the whatever off to it. This way, when I lift my arm, the whatever acts as a sling to hold the bone in place, because the cartilage of the joint isn't working and playing well with others after 7 dislocations.

Oh, and this really, really hurts.

-- Anonymous, February 25, 2000

I had jaw surgery when I was 21 (6 years ago)to correct my bite which was apparently misaligned somehow. Anyway, this surger required a year of braces before the big event and then, when I had the surgery, my face swelled up like, literally, a basketball. I could look down and see my lips, people. Trauma. But, I was all better soon and now...I have nice teeth.

The only drawback has been that the right side of my chin remains numb causing me to have no feeling there if, just to pick a random example, I have a string of pizza cheese hanging from that area of my face. All of my friends know to be on chin patrol when we are dining together, lest something make its way to the right side dead zone.

-- Anonymous, February 25, 2000

BUNIONS!

Not a weird surgery, but a fun name.

BUNIONS and BUNIONETTES (also known as tailor's bunions!)!!!

-- Anonymous, February 25, 2000

I've never had truly major surgery. My brother got a pacemaker last year... He was awake and chatting with the surgeon during the entire procedure... felt obligated to try to be witty and wise-cracking but all-in-all, he would rather have slept through the opportunity.

I have had lots of oral surgery, root canals, etc. When your periodontist is doing gum surgery and he wears eyeglasses and you can see a reflection of your mouth in his glasses... that's when I close my eyes!

Had a hernia operation about ten years ago... not fun... In theory I might have been awake but I can remember nothing between when they put the magic happy juice (some kind of sodium pentathol related goodie) into my IV and when they were rolling me down the hall on a gurney afterwards, but I must have been babbling during surgery about wanting to get out and get running (I was doing a lot of running that year until the hernia stopped my training) because the first thing the doctor did when he saw my wife after surgery was to tell her over and over how important it was to keep me from running until he would give his approval. Oh migod when the various medications wore off... ouch... I was so happy a few days later when he finally took those damned staples out! And I got some small understanding of what my wife had gone through with two caesarian sections when, a few days after the surgery, I wanted to go for a walk around the block only to discover that just going a few houses down the street exhausted me.

Vasectomy

...and all the guys reading this cringe slightly and have to resist the urge to cup their hands protectively over their groin...

Hey, look, if your wife is telling you she wants to retire from reproduction, well... a vasectomy is really minor compared to a tubal ligation... And it only takes a few minutes... But I will admit that lying on the operating table, wrapped in a sheet with my arms pinned to my sides, a nurse on either side of me and a man with some sharp knives about to bring one of those sharp blades towards my totally exposed private area... oh, did I ever want to scream and run away! And then he's working away, snip snip slice slice, and I can feel some tugging and I'm thinking that if I can feel that then maybe the novacaine or whatever is wearing off and I don't know how long it's going to take to do this... and I realize that he is talking to me about post-op care and that the tugging was him tying off the last of the sutures. And I had learned from horror stories about pain from guys who felt real macho afterwards and played basketball and such and then were in swollen agony for days... Surgery was on a Friday morning and I just kept my feet up all weekend and took it real easy and I had no problems at all, in fact I ran in a five mile race the following Saturday, just eight days after the vasectomy (I don't claim to have set a personal speed record, but I did run the race without problems.) (So, if any males reading this are considering a vasectomy, I can assure you that, other than a moment of terror, it is not bad.)

Jim

-- Anonymous, February 25, 2000

Allison,

My friend Charlie had the exact same surgery and he also has the numbness in his chin. We're constantly on him to wipe food off his chin. He thought something went wrong in his surgery. He'll be happy to hear he's not alone in his numbness.

-- Anonymous, February 25, 2000

I had all four wisdom teeth removed on the same day.

Not only that, but they had to remove a section of my jaw to get to one of the teeth. I slept on my side one night (because it is the only way I can sleep), and all of the blood from my surgery pooled in one cheek. I had to go to school three days after the surgery because it was midterms, and I looked like an abused housewife, because the swelling went from the top of my collarbone to my eye. It was a mess.

It took almost a month for the bruising and swelling to go down. I have never had so many people look at me with that pitiful look. My boyfriend at the time wouldn't go anywhere with me. He was afraid people would beat him up.

So he has this program to make tshirts, and he made one that said, "Ask me about my wisdom teeth." He made me wear it every time we went somewhere together.

-- Anonymous, February 25, 2000

maybe this doesn't count because it's not me it's a friend, but...

S. has had thyroid problems for years, and her eyes have swollen out. sort of like having a size 8 eye in a six 5 eye socket. she has had eyelid surgery twice (imagine both eyes stiched up and bleeding) and the eyelids have only relaxed slightly. when she sleeps, they don't close all the way, so her eyes are dry and she gets lots of headaches. the only option left is another surgery, but this time they are going to displace her eye from it's socket, remove part of the bone underneath to make more room, and arrange the eyeball back inside. i can't believe she is considering this, especially since her eyes do look more relaxed after the first two surgeries. but hey, i guess it's worth it to her.

myself, the only "weird" surgery i've had is on my nasal passages. they're permanently swollen. once they burnt them out, the next time they froze them out, but the membrane grows back. so i have the sniffles all the time it seems. funnily enough, i bet cocaine would help, since it wears away the membrane - but i'm not going there! :)

- cyn of ihaveasecret.com

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2000

this has nothing to do with surgeries...i just wanted to say hey cyn! the web's a small world huh?

-- Anonymous, February 27, 2000

I don't know if this counts as surgery but I once had a mole removed from the center of my back. The doctor said it would require a punch because it was mostly subdermal. After get a local of novacaine, a tool like an apple corer was shoved into my back. Doc then grasped the upper part with clamps and used scissors to cut the tissue below the root of the mole. During this process, he complained to the nurse that the scissors were dull. She offered to get him another pair, but he said, "No, I'll just finish with these." I was thinking, "Holy crap, that's MY back!!"

Though the area had been numbed, I could still feel the *sensation* of the scissors cutting. Ewwwwww.....

That was 8 years ago. Last year, I had to have another mole removed. This one from my front left rib cage. No punch required, but slicing with a scalpel. This left a shallow spot that didn't even need to be stitched.

Unfortunately, the biopsy on this mole came back pre-cancerous, so I had to return to have more tissue removed and had to have it stitched this time. The stitching wasn't bad until I suddenly felt the stab of a needle. More novacain was swiftly administered. (Fortunately, this time the biopsy came back all clear.)

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2000

When I was eight years old, I got this weird wart on my left ring finger. It was right on the front, which made using that finger impossible, and my mother decided she'd take me in to have it removed.
In my then-eight years, I had never been as .. shocked.. at the sight of anything as I was when they whipped out an enormous needle and jabbed it right into the center of that finger.
They laid me down on a table and burnt the thing off. The doctor put himselfbetween my head and my hand, so I couldn't see what they were doing. But I could see wisps of smoke trailing back from over his shoulder. I heard sparking noises. I was terrified, but through the whole thing, I never whimpered.
When the whole thing was over, the doctor (who, I think, never had to deal with little kids) called me into the office.
I walked in, nervous and scared but quiet, and he told me I was very, very brave. He then gave me a small, silver statue of a duck.
I still have it... and I think that now, it was some kind of gesture of thanks for me not trying to scream his eardrums into an early death.

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2000

I had a similar horrifying experience with warts, except in my case, they were frozen off. And i did scream, oh yes, i did indeed.

Oh, and also a heart ablation - basically, they stick a beeeeg needle in your thigh and throat, then take a little bitty car-cigarette lighter to the interior walls of your heart, and burn a couple dozen spots. They said i wouldn't feel it, but imagine being burnt where you can't rub it, you can't pour water on it, it's, well, quite literally heartburn. I was a little too doped to scream at that one, but yow.

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2000

hehehe oh man.. i have such a funny medical history.. i almost made some people piss their pants! anyway:

when i was about 6 my mom noticed i was scratching my butt crack a lot so she took me to the doctor. i remember it was a female doctor with latex gloves and she spread my cheeks to find PINWORMS. my entire family had to take these nasty orange pills.

when i was in 4th grade i had a boil on my armpit. i had to get it lanced and keep gauze on it for 2 days. at first i thought it was a pimple or a mosquito bite so i kept trying to pop it until i saw bloody grey stuff. then i screamed and told my mom. if i had a digital camera i'd get a pic of the scar.

that's pretty much all the times i actually went to the doctor. last summer i was in panama and swam in this small river that i had to climb down waterfalls and stuff to get to. it took about an hour to get back home and the only thing i could do was crap. then i'd come out, lie down, and my stomach would have that pain again and i'd crap. this was every half hour. i couldn't go anywhere for fear that i'd crap my pants. eventually it went away. i think it was amoebic dystentery.

also, weird thing about warts. for a few years i had a wart on my left ring finger too.. i tried all the over the counter things to get rid of it, but i'd always run out right before it was totally gone. so on that same visit in panama, i got bit my some bug on that same finger, and it caused a really weird itch. the next few days the wart just peeled off but the scab from the bite stayed for about 4 months.

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2000

Just briefly to Jim....thanks for the description on the Vasectomy, since that simultaneously comforted and horrified me. The subject's been on my mind, and it's nice to hear something that isn't ALL bad.

Okay, since we're talking about weird operations and this is a fairly anonymous forum, I'll go ahead and tell you.

Before I was ten I had four operations that required me to be knocked unconcious by various medications (all that made me violently ill upon awakening). The first was to have my tonsils removed when I was 5. When I was 6 I had what was called a Hydroseil (I think that's how it's spelled, but I am not certain). That's the weird (and rather disgusting one).

Evidentally, when I was born there were some problems with my body and one of the end results was a lot of fluid built up in my scrotum so that they were swollen like balloons. So what they had to do was make a surgical incision to drain the fluid out, and monkey around with a couple of other things to ensure that it didn't happen again, and then sew me back up. For about two months afterwards I had a huge bandage making a complete package.

I'm sure that was more than anyone wanted to know, but you asked, so there you go.

After that operation, when I was 8, I had an operation on my eyes to replace a muscle that was making them slide in opposite directions. WHen that one didn't work, they attempted it again with some success when I was 10. Each time I was left completely blind for a couple of weeks because my eyes were swollen shut.

Not exactly a lot of fun on any of the occasions. Now I have...issues...with needles and the smell of hospitals.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2000