There is a bump in my leg. About two inches above the knee on the outside of my right leg. It’s small but hard, about the size of the tip of my index finger, with well-defined, sharp edges, like the corner of a plastic box, or the pointy tip of a plastic pen cover. Around this same time, I also notice that a portion of my right leg, just above the knee, has decreased sensation. Like when your foot falls asleep—numb, minus the tingly feeling. Just numb.
The bump in my leg feels like a bee sting. Sometimes, I wake up at night and that little thing is burning, stinging, and throbbing. It’s a sharp pain, snatching me out of my dreams. I put my finger on it, and the object is pulsating, right on the surface of my skin, like it’s trying to tunnel its way out. Other times, it’s small and hard to locate, dwelling dormant somewhere deeper in the confines of my leg, resting perhaps.
I try to ignore it. I obsess that it’s a blood clot. My mom had a blood clot in her leg after she broke her foot, and two weeks later she had a stroke. A DVT – DEEP VEIN THROMBISIS – they called this blood clot. I don’t want to know what it is, this little bump in my leg. This little stinging bump in my leg has awakened my dormant fears, sending my mortality back to the forefront, with stinging reality. I am not getting any younger, and all things are unstable. I nurse my tender edges with things that help me forget.
But a year later, the little stinging thing is still there, and stinging a little more often…I try to keep track, but there is no pattern. Random stinging. While I’m walking. When I’m standing still. When I’m sitting in a chair. When I’m sleeping. Randomly, that little object starts stinging. Always, it is sharp enough to draw my complete attention.
Finally, I have to go see my primary physician anyway, so I tell her about the stinging bump.
“Yes, I feel it,” she says, poking at the stinging bump. “It could be a sebaceous cyst or something like that.”
She says she doesn’t have to tools to remove it, so she sends me to a surgeon.
At the surgeon’s office, I wait anxiously, anticipating the removal of my stinging bump. I fill out a health history, essentially the same form that I just updated at the office of my primary care physician. I anticipate the quick removal of my stinging bump. I wait in the lobby. I wait longer in the examination room. I keep my finger on that stinging bump, scared that I will not be able to locate it when I need to. That he won’t be able to feel it.
“It’s a lipoma,” he tells me. “Usually a type of benign fatty tumor. I don’t think I have the proper instruments here in my office,” he tells me. “I think I’ll have you come to the surgical hospital.”
I tell him about the numbness.
“That’s not related,” he says, matter-of-factly. “That’s a nerve issue. Have you hurt your back recently?”
“No,” I reply.
I am disappointed. My stinging bump has already turned into a much bigger deal than I imagined. And the surgeon has already moved the conversation on to my occupation and marital status, and within moments, his nurse has booked me an appointment for next week at the surgical hospital.
Two days prior to the procedure, a nurse calls me at home to go through yet another health history…another version of the same information that I’ve already completed for my primary care physician, again at the surgeon’s office, and now once again on the phone (why can’t these medical people have some sort of integrated database???)
I am told to arrive almost two hours prior to my actual appointment time. The surgical hospital seems more like a hotel than a hospital. A place you’d like to return to, not a place to be afraid of. A brand new building, the lobby decked out with a large flat screen TV, wireless internet, a computer station, coffee and complimentary beverages...complimentary meal vouchers for family members. I am directed to a private registration area to check in, where I sign numerous forms and receive a wristband on my right arm, and then return to the lobby.
Soon I’m called out of the lobby by a nurse who immediately introduces herself and shakes my hand. I’m shocked by this, as it is in direct opposition to most of the health care professionals I encountered during the four months my mom spent in a hospital after having a stroke, professionals who rarely introduced themselves or explained medical concepts in a way that an average person can understand.
The nurse takes me back to a staging area where she asks me what my name is, date of birth, and what I’m there for. She is the first of various nurses who, before that surgeon takes any instrument to my leg, asks me a series of questions to validate who I am and what I’m there for. She asks me if the doctor explained to me, in a way I could understand, about the procedure he was going to perform that day. She goes through some information with me on my chart, at the top of which says, “Subcutaneous mass right leg.”
After I change into a disposable gown, and put on a hat and booties, the nurse escorts me to a bed with a curtained off area and my own private flat screen TV. A new nurse now takes over, saying she will be with me throughout the surgery and recovery time, asking me several times if there’s anything I need, or if I have any questions. She explains that they will be using local anesthetic, which will be painful, but after that I will feel only some pulling or tugging in the area of the lipoma.
Finally the surgeon arrives. “That bump didn’t go away, did it?” he jokes, as he takes a black marker to the spot on my right leg where the lipoma resides. And quickly he is gone, the nurses then wheeling my bed from the staging area and into the operating room. On the way, we pass through a bustling nurse’s station and the recovery area.
In the operating room, there are now three nurses, each who has a different job. They wheel my bed up next to a narrow, elevated bed and ask me to move over. Again I’m asked who I am, my birth date, why I’m here. They put sheets over me and above me and arrange lights and do all sorts of things in preparation for the procedure.
But no matter how busy these nurses are, they never lose that personal touch. It is the job of one of these three nurses, to remain next to my head, and within my sight, at all times during the procedure. “Don’t worry,” she tells me. “Nothing will begin until you’re told, so you don’t have to worry about anything happening suddenly.”
Soon the surgeon is there, greeting me by my first name, although I cannot see him, due to the sheet that is elevated above my face.
“You’re about to feel a couple bee stings here,” he warns me.
“Ok,” the nurse next to my head says. “Now is when you get to abuse my hand,” she said, squeezing my hand hard.
And suddenly the stinging begins, in the side of my leg, moving deep and down, and I cry out, and squeeze hard...my heart beating hard and fast, like a rocket coming through my chest…my breathing heavy…my cheeks flushing red and hot.
“Can you feel that?” the surgeon asks.
“I don’t think so.” I feel some tugging, like the nurse predicted, but no pain.
“Ok, it’s out,” I hear the surgeon say, only moments later.
And it seems then, that it takes longer to patch it up than it did to remove it, as the surgeon asks me what kind of music I like and jokes with us about the musical preferences of his wife’s ex-boyfriend.
“Would you like to see it?” he asks me.
“Yes,” I reply.
It’s a small, white mass, floating in a container of clear fluid. A tiny little white thing, about the size of the tip of my index finger. Like those chunks of fake fat they show you in health class when you’re in high school.
“I don’t think it’s cancerous or anything, but I’ll send it in to the lab,” he tells me.
Moments later, they are telling me I did well, and wheeling me in to the recovery area, where yet another nurse offers me complimentary beverages and a complimentary meal from their on-site bistro restaurant. I’m already perusing the menu when the surgeon comes in to check on me, assuring me that the food here is excellent, and then he is gone…
It’s hard to believe something so small could create such a ruckus…but what a state of the art bunch of professionals they were. I’d like to go back to that hotel—I mean hospital—any time. My complimentary mandarin chicken salad was exquisite.
I can’t wait to see the bill…
