Lucky first review since operation.

I saw the Specialist Nurse.

• She checked my eyesight which has remained unchanged. As I haven't had an eyelid reconstruction, I can get glasses made up to my new prescription any time I want at my opticians. (My optician had warned me that eyelid surgery might change my prescription and take a while to settle and recommended prior to surgery that I delay getting my new prescription, which is only slightly different, made up.) 
• The nurse confirmed that my eyelid has healed up really well. I can now do everything apart from not bathing my eye in sea water. I can swim in the sea but should aim not to immerse my eyelid in it.
• I've been using too much Vaseline for massaging my eye. It's only meant to be a little bit just to stop the massage making my eye sore. Vaseline is not meant to get into my eye. This could damage my eye. I can massage my eye three times a day for two minutes a time (instead of just two). I should clean the Vaseline off my eye afterwards. I should look to my right when I massage my eyelid to make sure that I don't scratch my cornea by mistake. That way if I do scratch my eye by mistake, it'll be the white of my eye which won't matter nearly as much.
• I can still go to Costa Rica in their summer but she recommended to wear a very broad rimmed hat.
• In general I should in life aim to keep out of sun when sun is strongest, including in UK and wear a minimum of Factor 30 sun screen - (I already wear Factor 50). Some people who always keep out of sun get BCCs.
• I have a review appointment in three months time to check that there is no sign of any further cancer growth. This is because both she and my Consultant had thought that I had SCC because of the look and shape ("morphology") of my lesion. That's why my Consultant had wanted to remove it as fast as possible. She told me that BCCs don't usually grow keratin horns. Squamous cells are much more likely to. She added that the only thing that is definitive about what kind of cells there are is a biopsy.
• I asked about the benign papilloma from the biopsy result last year, turning into a BCC on the biopsy result this year. She told me that papillomas don't turn into BCCs. She thinks that there may have been some BCCs elsewhere in my eyelid. (This is in contrast to what I've read from medical research articles on the internet. Google Scholar search suggested to me that benign papillomas can change and turn into keratin horns. A Google Scholar search for keratin/ cutaneous horns suggested to me that the base is most commonly BCCs. However when I later did a Google Scholar search for SCC this did suggest that these are more likely to grow keratin horns than BCCs.)
• My tear duct is touching my eyeball as it should be. It's not leaning in as it should be. However it is upright rather than leaning out. Fluid is draining out of my eye and it is working. In 12 month's time my consultant may do something to my tear duct. However drilling a hole in my nose to drain fluid, which is the procedure that I've read about, would be the worse case scenario.
• From my perspective, my tear duct position has improved from 7th/8th September when it wasn't touching my eyeball. So I think that massage has improved it already.
• Yesterday the vertical surface above the interior corner of my upper eyelid was red from the corner across in parallel with the scar below. The red then spread all the way across that area and it became swollen. The interior corner of my eye stung. I took antihistamine and it resolved within a few hours. The nurse said that if I get Vaseline in the corner of my eye it will sting.

Having it explained to me today that my Consultant and the specialist nurse had been thinking my lesion was an SCC made much more sense of my treatment and why I was advised not to delay treatment looking into getting MOHS surgery privately. It's quite lucky in some ways that they thought it was a SCC. I think otherwise if they'd thought it was a BCC I might have waited far longer for treatment? As it turned out, I'm very glad in some ways that I didn't have MOHS surgery because my understanding is that I would then definitely have needed an eyelid reconstruction - although that may not have be correct.

I am so much looking forward to going on holiday in less than a week's time . The very holiday that my Consultant originally recommended I cancel. I'm so glad I didn't. I know I've been very, very lucky with my operation results and healing. A very good result.