The Unwanted Additional Wart Installment

The wart was hanging on. Much smaller. Drastically weakened. But alive. And so, when the phone rang on October 20th with a much-needed reminder call from Dr. Pop's office about my October 22nd appointment, I figured I would go. Ask Dr. Pop what's up.

This time I only waited about 20 minutes in the waiting room.

Dr. Pop seemed pleased with how my wart looked. He stared at it. Then lowered his magnifying glasses and stared some more before saying, "I think we should laser that sucker!"

I agreed to that and as he RAN out the door, I rushed to ask him all the questions I had about how much it would

HURT. Since no one around there volunteers information like that.

He told me it wouldn't hurt nearly as bad as the injections had. He promised me. And then he said "besides, you have pain medication now. You haven't used it all, right?"

"Right, but will I need it?"

"No no. You shouldn't. This won't be 'wake you up in the night' pain like last time."

"Wake me up? I never slept."

"Again, I'm real sorry about that, sweetheart. I'm just doin' everything I can to get rid of your damn wart! Now, Stacy will be with you in a minute, kid, to get you taken care of."

"Thanks, Doctor." It was all I could say.

Stacy came and escorted me to a new waiting room--one with poofy couches, all manner of beverages, some sad-looking Danish butter cookies, and a large wall-mounted TV showing Oprah. Charlie, who'd been in the outer waiting room with my mom, joined me after a few minutes. He ate one of the butter cookies (as did my mom) but failed to notice the juice boxes lined up behind some of the flavored coffee packets.

When Stacy came for me again, we asked her if he could come with me into the laser room. She said fine, as long as he would wear the glasses. This sounded mysterious, but not too difficult to comply with.

Once in the room, I had to sign a consent form. It was actually written in plain English and informed me that the laser might cause "pain, skin flaking, redness, swelling, blackness" and so on. I asked her how much it would hurt.

"It feels like someone is flicking you with a rubber band." She made the motion of pulling back and releasing a rubber band with her fingers. Ok, I can handle that.

She put blue-lensed glasses on all of us "to protect our eyes," turned on the laser, and, I don't know, applied it to my wart about 5 times.

Why do I believe these people? It felt nothing like being flicked with a rubber band. Ok, it felt like the rubber band was approaching at an extremely high velocity and was laced with needle-sharp spikes. And then it burned. She left my side and returned quickly with some aloe vera and rubbed it over the area.

This is where I was starting to be scared. Because it hurt. And I'm thinking "oh no, not again." But this time, the pain began to fade almost immediately. I did limp out of there, but all stinging had stopped within 15 minutes.

Phew.

As I left, I asked Stacy how long until I would know if the laser had worked. She told me to give it about two weeks. Then the wart should just disappear.

Well, it's been two weeks plus two days since that laser treatment, and the wart looks a lot like it did one day later: black. Not a "black and blue" kind of black, just a "something in there was burned" kind of black.

And the whole thing is now approximately the size of a grain of rice. And you know, I can't help but wonder what would happen to the the little black thing if I had good ol' Sahm around to debride it.

But since Sahm and his scalpel aren't available to me, I guess you and I are in for some more wait-and-see time.