I’m sixty years old now.  I’m told I don’t look it.  I’m told that I have an attractive face, but attracted by what?  I have old age spots.  Spots that look like cancer.  Also there are wrinkles all over my face when I laugh that makes me look like a Sharpei.  I’m bald, but I like what I have left longer than most peoples.  Even some women’s hair length.  Nothing Ben Franklinish, though. 

Anyway, I felt I needed a couple of spots looked at.  There was one on each temple.  Of course I get there, they check me in and put me in the brightly lit exam room and take my information down and tell me the doc will be in shortly.  Oh, and they told me to take my shirt off.  Why in hell would they tell me that?  I just wanted my face looked at.  Oh well. 

In comes the doc.  All of them used to work at the hospital where I work.  So I know something about them already.  No surprises.  Dr Murphy starts looking my head over and points out several “old age” spots of which included the two I was concerned about.  Drats.  Old age spots, my ass.  Then he gets out that canister thing upon which I realize this contraption is a container for freezing these spots on my head.  He checks it against his hand, so i think this will be okay.  Once he proceeded to “zap” each of these spots I find that piercing my head with 20 penny nails might be a better option.  That freezing stuff hurts, man.  When he got done he counted them all and told the assistant he had frozen thirteen spots. 

The muscles on my scalp were pulsating by now.  If you’ve ever had your skin crawl, mine was trying to escape my head entirely thinking this was the end and needed to flee the body completely. 

But that wasn’t all.  He proceeded to look at the upper part of my body and he seemed to be satisfied, but then he started looking through my scalp and had an “ah ha” moment.  He seemed to think he’d found a cancer in my left sideburn.  This meant a shave biopsy.  Crap.

The assistant was ordered to inject lidocaine in the area for the biopsy.  I figured this couldn’t be as bad as when the ENT doc injected the same drug into my ear canal years ago to insert a tube for draining my inner ear.  But let me tell you something.  Damn, that hurt.  Almost immediately the assistant started poking around the site asking did I feel anything.  Hell yeah!  Which was the word for “gimme some more injections” to her.  So she gave me more.  All I could hope for was I didn’t eventually go completely numb on the left side of my face and start drooling or something.  Thank goodness my face became numb without drooling. 

The doc comes back in and in a few seconds shaves a part of the skin off and announces he’s done and will let me know the results in around eight days or so.  I’m so relieved.

I’m ready for Flounders.  It’s a restaurant close by with some very good seafood.  I just hope I can taste it.