Harry Potter Powers?

It began as a small itchy crater on my forehead, near an eyebrow. A biopsy showed skin cancer. I was warned that there’d be swelling and that an eye might swell shut. 

Last week, Dr. Joshua Wilson performed Mohs surgery on it, carving a round chasm a little smaller than a dime. One of the advantages of Mohs surgery is that you know your results right away. You usually don’t leave your appointment until all of the skin cancer has been removed.

Son Dan suggested that this may give me some powers like Harry Potter and the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.

Mohs surgery is considered the most effective technique for treating many basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas, the two most common types of skin cancer. Sometimes called Mohs micrographic surgery, the procedure is usually done in stages, including lab work, while the patient waits. It allows the removal of all cancerous cells for the highest cure rate while sparing healthy tissue and leaving the smallest possible scar. Dr. Wilson removed all three layers the first time.

The surgery was developed by Frederic E. Mohs, MD, in the late 1930s. In the mid 1960s, Perry Robins, MD, studied the procedure with Dr. Mohs took the technique to NYU, where he established the first fellowship training program to teach dermatologists this skin cancer surgery, called Mohs surgery.

Before they discovered how to flash freeze tissue, this took more than one day. After waiting only about 45 minutes for the lab work, Dr. Wilson’s assistant, Taylor, announced that the cancer was gone, then talked about stitches. But how could they stitch the sides of a circle that large? She made a diagram of V-shaped cuts Dr. Wilson would make below and above the crater, borrowing neighboring tissue to suture together. Skin tissue is alive and malleable, and begins to heal itself right away. Just amazing.

The pictures online show how a pretty good sized excision can turn into a nice straight hardly-noticeable scar, but I guess my old author photo will have to do for Meadowlark Songs: A Motherline Legacy.

The whole thing took about three hours, then I kept busy at home icing the area so it wouldn’t swell much, although bruising might show up later. The photo is from two days after surgery, when I was allowed to take off the original bandage. Very little swelling! I’m so grateful.

This skin cancer is probably from detasseling corn, earning my first $100. 1958. The surgery will cost a bit more than how much I earned that entire summer.

An interesting tidbit: Dr. Wilson’s grandmother, age 92, rode on RAGBRAI for years, retiring from it just a few years ago!