Cysts, Moles, and Making Doctors Uncomfortable

Today for the first time in my entire life, I received external stitches. Let's go back to January, when a mysterious blue bump appeared on my face. I tried popping it with a needle, but it just made it a huge red bump. After talking with Katie Cullen, we decided that it was a cyst. I talked to the nurses at my work and also the nurses at the ER (when I was there with a patient) and they all told me to just put hot compress on it. Well, I did and nothing happened. I still had a blue dot on my face. So I decided to go to the dermatologist because my Utah State insurance will end in August.

So today I went to the office and let me just say it was something start out of Trout Creek, Montana. It had dark patchwork-pieced-together-carpet, dark woodwork, white plastic walls, and random pictures of nature. They had me go sit in a room and wait for the doctor. The doctor came in and asked "I'm Dr. Stone, this is my PA assistant. How can we help you?". I stated "Get this thing off my face" pointing to the cyst on my face. I told him "It's a cyst and it hurts when you touch it". He said "You said the exactly the right thing 'It's a cyst and it hurts when you touch it'. We'll take it off". I stated "I also have moles for you to look at". Before I even finished making this statement his assistant was inspecting the mole on my arm. Now I have been to numerous doctors who have looked at the mole on my arm and stated "Just keep watching it". I also showed the doctor the mole on my left breast. Without hesitation the doctor, to no one in particular, stated "Ok take out the cyst and the moles are gone". I began to lift up my shirt so that the doctor can remove the mole. The doctor stated "No, no. Just pull it down this way so that you're more comfortable". What he really meant to say was "You having your shirt up is making me and my assistant uncomfortable". I said "Whatever works for you", because since I regularly sit have naked while people rip the hair from my 'crotch' I have grown very comfortable exposing myself in rooms full of people.

I continued to ask a million medical questions as usual. The doctor administered the shot into my breast and I looked the other way. Then he states "You won't feel anything, just a little pressure". I look down at a swollen, bloody mole and a scalpel and said "Cool". "What are you studying?" The doctor asks. "Psychology" I nonchalantly state. "Have you ever considered medicine?" he asks me. "Yes, but I'm very, very bad at chemistry" I reply. The doctor states "Well in high school I was bad a chemistry, but in college it was different". I told the doctor "Yeah, my high school chemistry teacher told me 'You might as well give up now because you'll end up in retail'". The doctor, his assistant, and the nurse spent the next mole removal trying to tell me how wrong my teacher was and all that jazz.

I asked for a mirror to watch the removal of the cyst. They used a mole punch to cut straight to the core of the cyst. My face was bloody and the doctor was pulling chunks out of my face. It was awesome. Then it came time to stitch up my face. I begged the doctor to let me do one of the stitches. He said that because it was in such an awkward spot he couldn't. He told me that if I get a mole off my stomach, then he will allow me to. He also told me to go home and "look in places where the sun doesn't shine for moles and I will gladly take them off for you". Good thing I got a brazilian wax so I can examine places the sun doesn't shine.

When it was all over, I asked the doctor how soon I will be able to go swimming. He asked, "Well, try to stay out of public pools for a while." I asked "What about the lazy river at Seven Peaks?". He said "That will be fine as long as you use waterproof bandaids and put vaseline on them every half hour. And try to keep your head above the water". Little did the doctor know that I rarely put my head under the water.

Moral of the story: don't try to lift your shirt in a dermatologist's office, wear sunscreen, check places where the sun doesn't shine for cancerous moles, and if there's a blue bump on your face for numerous months, it's probably a cyst.

Fire Crotch

Today at work I got kicked in the crotch by one of my patients. No, it wasn't the one who normally targets me (our most aggressive patient), nor was it the black man who thinks he's white who throws things. It was our brandnew patient who has an IQ of 56 (for all of you who aren't psychology nerds, the average IQ, well depending on what test is administered, is 100 with a standard deviation of 15). Anyways, this patient did not want to come in from the courtyard, so he sat down in the middle of the hallway. My co-worker went over and picked him up while I held the door. The patient started kicking at the wall so my co-worker shifted his weight and the patient kicked me. It was like a slow motion movie. He turned and face me. Looked directly at my crotch and then delivered a very hard swift kick. Among the panic that insued, I remained calm. I was even making jokes. He had actually kicked me in the best place possible, because it didn't hurt when he kicked me, probably from the fat that is contributing to my small veins. So after he was escorted by other co-workers of mine, I returned to the courtyard to bask in the sun, laughing to myself that I had just been kicked in the woman parts.

When I returned to the unit the nurse asked me how my shin was doing. I told her my shin was fine, but that wasn't where the patient kicked me. I had to explain it was my crotch. Now I am a very open person, but I like to use anatomically correct terms. But apparently there aren't anatomical terms for the front of the crotch. I had to fill out paperwork and type up reports on the incident, and with every 'crotch' that was written I became more and more uncomfortable. Why? Because I couldn't use words that I'm used to using like uterus, vagina, or cervix. No, I was stuck repeatidly writing 'Crotch' and like a 7-year-old-schoolboy I was embarrassed. I didn't even know how to spell crotch, I had to ask the nurse.

Then the doctor came in to assess the situation. The nurse so kindly told him "Whitney here got kicked in the crotch".There was that word again. Crotch. Crotch, crotch, crotch. By this point I had embraced the fact that I had been kicked in the crotch. The doctor asked "Are you ok?". I turned to him and stated "I don't think I'll be able to have children, but other than that I'm fine.". Everyone laughed but then when I was filing an incident report the paper stated 'are you injured?' and you had to check yes or no. Well, I didn't know. Can you break your crotch? I had to make a new box that said 'unknown'. The nurses told me that I wouldn't know until I used the bathroom. So naturally I was terrified that when I went the bathroom I would be in extreme pain. So an hour later, when I got the nerve to use the bathroom I was suprised to find my crotch was not broken.

Don't worry, since I filed an incident report, if anything happens Utah State Hospital (ie. Tax payers of Utah) have to pay for it.

Plasma and the Lack of Donation

So this past week I finally got the nerve to donate plasma. After stalling for about 3 hours I went. When I got there I was told I needed my social security card, which I didn't have. But the man decided to "look at my veins". After a few minutes of pumping my hand the man informed me that my veins were too small. Yes, that's right your veins can be too small. The guy behind me told me, "Yeah, think of a caprisun straw, that's about the size of the needle" and why he tried talking to me I have no idea. I turned to him and said "I can handle that" and turned back to the phlebotamist and stated "Are you freaking serious?". He was freaking serious. I thought my friend Caroline was the only person in the world with small veins, because she has small arms. I plead with the man, "I've never had any problems donating blood with this vein" pointing to the fatty vein in my left arm (I've had to do a lot of blood work this past year because of mono and working at the State Hospital, don't think I'm a drug addict or anything). "You need two veins so that if something happens to the first, we have a backup". That should have been a redflag right there, but I want the money that comes from the donation. So I asked what I could do and he stated "Do bicep curls with low weights and high reps". (Katie Cullen are you listening to this?) Sounded easy enough, but because I'm not a fulltime student BYU won't allow me in the weight room. So therefore, I can't donate.

As I sat pondering about my donating failure, I realized what a fat joke this whole thing was. Exercise to donate plasma? No thank you. I'd rather spend the money I should have earned by donating on McDonalds.