Episode 6: A New Hope

Thursday, August 27th, 8am.

I'm in the office of my mom's dermatologist. And I'm waiting. I've gotten on the schedule on short notice because of a cancellation, but apparently that means I have to wait. Until 8:45. To get into one of those exam rooms. So I can wait for the doctor.

My kids don't seem to mind the wait that much. They are in the little kids' alcove playing with all the broken toys. My mother and I are a little more impatient. She says she's never had to wait like this here before.

Why am I telling you about all this waiting? You've been to doctor's offices before, right? Well, Dr. Pop (not his real name) finally comes in and we start having a talk about my lovely wart. He knows, from speaking to my mom, that I want this thing cut out, and he quickly tells me he doesn't think that's a good idea. I asked why.

"This is a weight bearing part of your foot" (Yeah, I know) "and to do surgery on a weight bearing part of your foot like that--it's malpractice. You could develop scar tissue that would cause you to limp for the rest of your life."

Huh. Scar tissue. Limp. Huh. Didn't have any of that stuff last time.

Next the doctor asked me to come sit near the little desk where we could have a talk. And I was waiting for it--the announcement of the brilliant plan to freeze the wart with liquid nitrogen every month into perpetuity until it goes away. But instead he got a little sheet of paper and a pen and began to right down all my options as he knew them.

Before this, my understanding of my options had been:
1. Treat it myself using over-the-counter products that aren't worth the $6.89 you pay for them.
2. Have it frozen off as listed above--hopelessly fighting a failing battle with another weapon too weak to win.
3. Find someone, somewhere who will numb it, cut it out, and bandage it up. What could be more simple?

But now, here was Dr. Pop making a list of my options. He was writing them down on paper for me. Not because he thought I was too dumb to grasp them if he didn't, but because he felt I had the right and the need to understand all the choices I really had before me.

What? A doctor recognizing my rights and needs beyond protecting his behind from lawsuits? Ok, so there was a little of the self-preservation instinct in him--see his quote above about malpractice--but honestly, I found his willingness to talk, listen, and explain

refreshing. New.

Here's a bad photographic image of the little sheet of paper he wrote and gave me. Can you read it?Can you see that I have more options than one? Sure, he wasted my time telling me about the "100's" of OTC Remedies and the Cryosurgery (which he agreed was a bit superficial for the monster we were fighting), but he gave me something I'd never had before--an alternative to surgery.

Now, I still didn't WANT an alternative to surgery, but if he was unwilling to do the surgery, at least he had something else to give me. Wow. He kept trying to talk me out of surgery, and I kept saying I'd never heard of options 3, 4, and 5.

Quickly he zeroed in on option 4, in which an antigen of the Candida fungus is injected directly into the wart itself. This causes the body's immune system to go crazy. The body hates candida (and by the way, so do I), so it fights to kill all traces of it. Since those traces of it are inside the wart, the body is fighting the wart off even if it doesn't know it. The doctor said it usually takes 1-3 injections spaced about a month apart to get the wart gone, but sometimes it works with just one.

Ah, now we came to it. How much was this going to cost me? My mom had already offered to pay for the office visit, since the whole thing was her idea. I explained that my insurance wouldn't cover anything and asked what these Candida injections were going to set me back.

He said, oh, they usually cost about $170 or so, but I'll waive that and just charge you for the office visit if you want to go ahead with the injections today. And remind me next time, and I'll give you a discount then, too.

This sounded like the way to go. So, after some thought and some chatting with my mom, I agreed.

Several things happened after that.

1. A digital photo was taken of the wart.
2. Someone whose name could be phonetically spelled Sahm came in to debride the wart.
3. I waited about 30 minutes.
4. A nurse came to inject the evil Candida into the most tender part of me.

Let's go back to number 2.

Sahm was, as Dr. Pop told me, a doctor but still just a resident. Meaning someday he'll be out on his own. When he is, I'll never willingly be his patient. Oh sure, he could handle the debridement just fine. He got a scalpel and began to cut away at the calloused skin that covers and surrounds my wart. And he assured me that he was going to stop as soon as he heard me say "ouch," which, after he scraped away for 10 minutes, I finally said. All that was fine. It was the stuff he said that bugged me. I told him I had previously had surgery to remove this and he lightly scoffed at the idea. He said something like

"This is going to be way better than a surgery. I bet with surgery it was a really painful recovery. I bet you had to be off of your foot for a couple of weeks."

"Actually," I said, "it wasn't like that at all. I could always walk on it, since I could just put my weight on the ball of my foot. After my surgery, I drove myself home. I don't remember it being a bad recovery at all."

I don't remember his response. He didn't strike me as the type who liked to be corrected or contradicted.

I asked him if the injections were going to be very painful. My children were present, I explained, and if the injections were going to make me cry out, I'd want them to leave the room so they wouldn't be frightened. Instead of saying "I don't know" which would have been for him a truthful answer, Sahm said "oh, not too bad. I guess it depends on how well you deal with pain. (as if to say, "depends on how wimpy you are.") You know, how you respond. But no, it won't hurt too bad."

Not true. And I should have known it. I did, really. I who have lived with this thing for years am the one who could truly imagine what the pain of pushing a needle (not once, but twice) into that hated parasite would feel like. Oh, it hurt. I didn't cry out, but I did gasp and tense up and work with all my might not to holler.

But then it was over, and the nurse had put a band-aid on it. As I stood up to leave, Dr. Pop poked his head in and asked how I was. I said fine and thanked him again for his help and generosity. He said "You won't be thanking me about an hour from now when that thing starts to hurt."

Blood rushing to my foot as I stood up was feeling nicely throbbish, so I said, "Oh, it's going to hurt in an hour? Cause it hurts pretty good right now."

"Well, good luck, and we'll see you in about a month" he said and went on his way. As the nurse was leaving, I asked her what I should do for the pain. She said "Just take some Tylenol as needed."

And with that, I limped out the door.

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I know what I said--one more installment before Sept. 24th, etc.--but c'mon. This one is long enough. I'll have at least two more about this oh-so-fasincating subject. But maybe some non-wart posts interspersed for my "I don't really want to read about her wart" readers. Assuming I haven't permanently frightened them away.