Annoying Wart On My Face

Esther had what she said was a wart near the corner of her mouth. She kept putting whatever she found in the cabinet on it--even though she didn't know what was in the bottle. She kept poking, pulling and picking at it. Jerry kept relaying this to me bit by bit over a couple of months. He came home from visiting her one day and said, "I told her you had some stuff that you could freeze that wart with." I told him, "You don't freeze things on your face yourself. You go to the doctor for that." The next time he saw her, a week or so later, he said to me, "That wart has doubled in size in a week." Then I knew it was not a wart. That very next morning I got a call from Esther:

"(Exasperated sigh) Paula, I want you to come here and cut this off of my face. I know you can do it."

The rest of the story is that I made her go to her doctor who took one look at it, said it was cancer and referred her to a very good Dermatologist. She impatiently waited two weeks for that appointment. ("Paula, why don't we stop in there today and see if they have a lull and can do it.") When the day of the appointment came she was more concerned that she have to wait to come back to have it removed, than she was about the diagnosis. The doctor took one look at it, said it was cancer and he would biopsy it. She didn't know that meant he would cut it off. So, even though they were both speaking to each other at this point, they were not having a conversation:

She is prattling on about him doing it today. He says, "I need to numb the area first. You will feel the needle, but just for a second." She says, "Are you going to do it now?" He says, "Are you ready?" She says, "Now?" He says, "Yes." She says, "OK". He then gently puts the needle in her cheek and she jumps at least a foot off the table because she had no idea he was going to do that. She only knew that she'd gotten her way and it would happen today.

The good news is that her face looks the best it has in years because he took care of everything on her face and it healed very well. Also the cancer was superficial.