OK, saying that is a little dramatic, but the phrase did cross my mind today.
I set off early this morning for UNC Hospital for another follow-up appointment with my surgeon. My appointment was at 8:15, so I figured that between early morning rush-hour on the highway, parking and walking to the clinic, I should give myself an hour and I would probably arrive a few minutes early. I ended up being ready even earlier, so I just went ahead and left.
I didn’t realize that traffic is not that heavy at 7:10 in the morning and I got there in like 20 minutes. On top of that, I arrived right at shift change, so there were a bunch of empty spots right up front and it took no time to park. By the time I got up to my appointment, it was only about 7:35 and the receptionist hadn’t even set up for the day yet. So I hunkered down for a few minutes and waited.
The went ahead and called me back at 8:00 and set me up in the room. My doctor came to see me within 10 minutes and we talked about how things are healing. He said that things looked good and definitely better than our last appointment, but still not quite where he would like it to be. He suggested being even more aggressive with the silver nitrate (joy!). He said he would like for me to use it EVERY DAY. Let me tell you now, that’s a great way to ruin the start of the day. I think he could tell by my face how I felt about that, so he stepped back and said every other day, but if I feel like I can, to do it every day. The reason being is that if it doesn’t heal quickly, the wound can start becoming more fixed and, therefore, more difficult to heal. We basically need to get it better while it’s still pliable, for lack of a better term.

Let me explain a little bit about these silver nitrate sticks. They aren’t hard to use, I can take care of what I need to do within about 10 seconds. But it’s the following hours that are the biggest pain. I’d call it a slow burning sensation. I remember when I was younger that someone accidentally hit me with the lit end of a cigarette. It hit me just for a moment, but for hours afterwards it continued to burn, no matter what I did. The silver nitrate is very similar to how I remember that being. I have been taking care of it right before I go to bed, hoping I can just sleep through it, but recently the pain has been keeping me awake. So in the past couple of weeks there have been a handful of nights where I haven’t gotten much sleep, but now I’m looking at having to deal with that every single night for the next three weeks.
So I told him that I would do my best to use them as often as possible. I left about 8:20, so I was in and out of there fast this morning, but come home with another slow burn and having to think about having a similar burn for the next 21 days.
I am doing my best to remain thankful that things are healing well, even if it is a bit of a slow process. I don’t have any actual issues to worry about, other than a mild rash, so I don’t want to complain. But I do think that having a nightmare would be less intrusive to my sleep schedule.