Well, the deed has been done and I am home again.
Most of the hospital time was spent waiting, including an extra hour when I was bumped in favour of an emergency surgery. No argument with that!
The operation itself did only take about half an hour and I am currently in no pain whatsoever. The surgeon told me he would be administering two types of local anaesthetic, one which would last one to two hours and another which would last six to eight hours.
I had a nurse with me the whole time and we were all variously chatting throughout. Believe me I felt the needles for the anaesthetic! It really didn't take long to take effect and I felt nothing at all until he was removing the melanoma itself, no pain, just a vague feeling of scratchiness, 'something going on'.
Even the names of the sutures they use are exotic _ Rio, Monaco, some other holiday destination type name. I have now looked at the result and it's vereeee ugly :( Two weeks and my GP or practice nurse can remove the stitches, three weeks and I have another outpatient appointment when the histology results should be back and determine what happens at the next operation.
I misheard or misunderstood what I was told about how wide an excision it would be: it was 2cm, not 1cm, but the surgeon explained that this is because he truly believes the depth is more than the biopsy stated 0.8mm. Whatever, it's gone now and however ugly the stitches, they will go and a scar can't look worse than the 'beast' did
