Excision Of Squamous Cell Carcinoma

I had an area removed from my right arm today; the procedure went really well. My derm is a graduate of MUSC and was chief resident. As he was numbing, excising, and

stitching I told him the story of my daughter in vet school trying to practice suturing on a sponge. He laughed and said he did all his practicing on live humans. He worked in the ER during med school and volunteered to do all the stitching of the drunks who came in with lacerations so he could get as much experience as possible. The advantage was that they didn't need quite as much Novocaine because they were already "feeling no pain" (I think he was kidding about that) and the disadvantage was that they would sometimes move involuntarily and compromise his sterile field. His supervising assured him that the gin bottle that sliced open the patient's hand probably wasn't sterile either and he would be getting antibiotics anyway, but my doc said he wanted to do it perfectly. I'm glad about that. I won't get to see it till tomorrow night when I change the bandage and hopefully it won't look like he took a machete to it (ha ha.) I go back in two weeks to get my stitches removed.

I decided not to share with him that Jerry Seinfeld thinks dermatologists are just pimple popper MDs. :-)