Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Bump Begone

I could title this Wart Begone, but I don’t really want my blog associated with warts, you know.  They’re like so grody.  So that’s why I am typing up an entire post devoted to my wart story?

Just know it really is quite a story or I wouldn’t be sharing it.   

It started out about six months ago, way back at Christmas-time.  I noticed a tender spot on my right thumb and it felt like the nail was pushing into my skin but upon examination, the nail was not too long and was not in fact even touching the skin.  Weird sensation, but I ignored it and no biggie. 

Fast forward a couple of months and it was still feeling strange, but now a slight bump was forming.  Not really painful so again, ignore, no biggie. 

By March-April, it was a bigger bump and starting to hurt, but was it worth a special trip to the doctor?  Didn’t seem like it.  It was just a bump.  I put some Neosporin and a band-aid on it.

By May, the thumb was swollen to almost twice the size of my normal thumb and pretty red.  The joint was so tight that it popped a real slow pop if I tried to bend my thumb.  If I accidentally bumped it, I got tears in my eyes and had to hold in some bad words.  It was painful.

At that point, Gary said I could not have a hair appointment until I got a doctor appointment.  I knew he meant business, plus, it’s hard to do much without involving the thumb of your dominant hand, so I went to the doctor.  By this time, it was taking on a different appearance, getting a layered kind of look.  Some brown in it.  Very ugly.  The doctor looked and said it was a wart.  I never suspected that at all.

He said it was so progressed that for him to freeze it in the office would take multiple visits and even then we would probably not have it all completely  removed, so he referred me right to the hand specialist to get it surgically removed. Whatever.  I just wanted it gone.  I asked if I hadn’t let it go so long, would a one-time treatment in his office have worked?  Yes. 

Darn procrastination!

A couple of weeks passed until I could be seen by the hand doctor.  The week of my appointment, in fact it was three days before, I noticed the swelling was going down, like dramatically.  By two days before, it wasn’t hurting even.  The day of the appointment, I woke up and wondered if I should even still go in, it felt so much better and had decreased in size an unbelievable amount just overnight. 

It was like finally getting your car into the mechanic and then it doesn’t make the noise that day.

The hand doctor looked at it and said he could scrape it down if I really wanted him to, but he would advise letting it continue as is since it was improving on its own.  He said to just call him back if it got red or swollen again.  Ok.  Sounded fine with me, but I admit it was a little disappointing to walk out having nothing done after going through all the business of getting this specialist to look at it and paying out the two co-pays and having this thing for six months.

That night I took a shower and when I got out, I happened to notice my thumb, my now smooth thumb;  the entire wart was gone and my skin looked as normal as ever at that spot!  It had simply dropped off and apparently gone down the drain. 

What a coincidence since it was the very day it was originally scheduled to be cut out.  So now I’m confused and not sure just which moral I learned from this story:

Take care of something simple before it turns into a real big deal.

OR 

Put it off so long and the problem will disappear like magic.

I don’t think I should really count on #2, except maybe in the case of a grody wart.

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