Scarry

Ah, July. This time last year I was going bonkers with worry; so glad that time has passed. I took the day off on May 19th (re. my last post) and had a fantastic time doing wonderful & fun things. I think I'll take July 30th off as well. I doubt I'll make this a yearly tradition (that seems a little morbid), but I'm feeling the desire to mark the one-year point for diagnosis & surgery, and can see no need to deny myself this.

Given the lack of health-based worry in my life right now, there hasn't been much to blog about. To bring things up to date: I did email my surgeon, including a photo of my scar (the same one attached to this post). His response was a little frustrating, given that I was expecting to hear something along the lines of "Yes, it's a bit reddish, but it'll fade with time." Instead of saying that, he first mentioned that the scar looked raised, and that if I wanted I could come in and have them inject a steroid into it to flatten it out. Then he said the redness might be permanent, but the steroid injection might improve that, too.

Thanks, dude. All I wanted was to hear was that it's not so bad, since I happen to not be terribly concerned about it myself, and instead I got new things to be semi-worried about. I choose to remain calm. It really isn't raised much at all, perhaps the photo makes it look worse that it is. And as to the redness, I've never heard of that being permanent, just taking longer to fade. I'm going to continue with the sunscreen, and start using more vitamin E on it. We'll see.

Now I need to get another blood test. I'm actually a month late on doing that - I got a reminder call the other day. Part of my procrastination has to do with trying to get enough vitamin D in my system - I forgot for a while to take those vitamins, and I was worried it would show up as a deficiency in the test. I think I'm sortof feeling tired with the tests at this point, too. Not worried, just not wanting to think about it. Dumb of me, and I have plans to get blood drawn tomorrow or the day after. Interested to see what the results are: I've been better with the vitamin D, and have been taking an extra half-pill of the thyroid supplement once a week.

I feel completely the same as ever, so hooray for that.

Here's the image I emailed:

Looking at this photo again, I can see why the surgeon thought the scar was especially raised. It's not as bad as it looks. Hard to take a good scar portrait!