The night before the surgery, the anesthesiologist called to run through the no-eating rules, etc. I told him that I was interested in twilight anesthesia rather than general anesthesia if it was at all possible, just because it is less hard on the system. He said that once they knew how extensive the operation was going to be we could make that call.
It was very difficult not knowing how bad the reconstruction would be after the Mohs because it left so many variables open, but I had no choice.
My husband drove me to the Mohs doctor’s office at 8am to begin the procedure. I bought a laptop computer, DVDs, magazines, books, my phone and iPod to keep me busy.
I was taken to a private exam room, where the assistant prepped me, marked my nose, and took pictures. My husband stayed in the room with me and watched the whole procedure (which was a surprise to him – he was expecting her to tell him to wait outside). She gently laid a cloth over my forehead and eyes – which was fine with me because I did not want to see what was going on – and then I got some shots of local anesthetics in my nose to numb it. The doctor did such a great job with the first shot of anesthesia in my nose that I hardly felt it. This was going to be ok!
She then did the excision, which lasted about 10 minutes. I didn’t feel anything. She cauterized it, which smelled horrible and felt like a light zap, but nothing bad. The assistant covered the area with bandages and then it was time to wait while she processed it. I watched a movie and texted with friends, but after about 45 minutes the anesthesia started to wear off and it was beginning to hurt.
By the time they came in to tell me they got about 70% of it but needed to do a second pass, it was smarting pretty well. I told them and they gave me more anesthesia, but this time the shots hurt like the devil! I don’t know if it was because I already had pain in that area or it was because they had to put it up closer to the bridge of my nose, but it was no fun. It did the trick, though, and she took her second slice. I went back to the movie, but once again, the anesthesia started to wear off after 45 minutes. It was really hurting this time. It felt like my nose had been hit with a basketball going about 50 mph. It smarted like the dickens and my eyes were constantly watering.
I called the nurse in to tell her and she said that the nose is really hard to keep anesthetized. She said they could give me another shot, but I was not thrilled about that. So we decided to wait and see if we had to do a 3rd pass. Luckily, the doctor came in about 15 minutes later and said we got the whole thing, so I decided against more shots since they weren’t lasting long anyways, and that I would just tough it out until my surgery in 2 hours.
The doctor measured the site (9mm x 7mm), took pictures and emailed them to my surgeon so she could start to plan the reconstruction. This was great – it was not our worst case analysis (although it was also not out best case). But still, I was comforted that I dodged a bullet on that.
We were done by 10:30am and out the door to proceed to our next stop for the repair.
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