After a lifetime of wanting it and a few weeks of dreading the impending appointment, I’ve finally gotten the mole removed from my face. As of writing this, I am sitting in my office, wondering how much my face is going to hurt once the acetaminophen wears off [turns out not at all, which is nice] as I try to carefully sip some water without stretching my upper lip too much or getting the bandage wet. As it turns out, I do not have a metal straw (despite definitely getting one with the bottle and straw brush set I bought last year), so I’ve had to practice at delicately pouring liquids into my mouth with little involvement from my upper lip. I don’t know if you think about it that much (I certainly didn’t prior to today), but being able to shift your lips around is a rather fundamental part of drinking things. Sure, since I have fairly full lips, I can press things to my mouth and use the pressure as a means of creating a liquid-proof seal, but that’s kind of painful at the best of times and does absolutely nothing for me right now because of where the bandage sits. To drink something without wetting my upper lip, I have to not only change the angle at which I normally hold my cup as I drink (a less horizontal angle than I’d normally like, which requires that I risk inhaling my beverage with every slurp), but I have to carefully wrap my lip over the rim so that I can only come into contact with my drink via the inside of my lip. Learning to do that was annoying, but I’ve gotten quite good at it now. Mostly thanks to repition. I drink a lot every day, so I’ve had plenty of opportunities to get a handle on things.

Other than the mechanical problems of drinking things during the first 24 hours (after which the first bandage comes off and I just have to avoid drinking so deeply I get stuff directly on or in the wound somehow since I’ll be able to just swap out bandaids as needed), it has been a relatively mild experience. I did not enjoy the procedure (and will not be detailing it here, for all our sakes), but the doctor who performed it was just as personable and friendly as he was during out last visit. He did everything quickly, professionally, and had me out the door again in about half an hour. He made his part in this procedure seem effortless. Which makes sense, I suppose, since he probably does stuff like this all the time. It was much more difficult for me because, once again, though it was numbed such that it did not hurt (the numbing process was pretty intense given that it happened to the very sensitive skin of my upper lip), I could still feel some sensation as he operated. It was less awful than getting skin tags removed back in March, since those weren’t numbed at all, but it was still deeply unpleasant given that it happened to my lip.

I’m still not sure how I feel about all this. I wasn’t able to see the site after the procedure was finished, since the doctor had covered it in a bit of medical goop and a bandage, so I’m not sure what it looks like. Not that seeing it then would have helped much, I imagine, given that it was probably pretty gross [it sure was, when I finally got the bandage off]. Plus, the site went from being something I could always see but was used to seeing to being something I can see and am not used to seeing (because of the bandage). I’ll probably need to keep it covered for a bit, though I’ll admit I’m not sure how long. I didn’t really get much in the way of concrete timeline-based instructions since I was so focused on asking questions about general care and was more than a little light-headed thanks to how relieved I felt now that the stress of the procedure was over. I could always send him a message to ask for some more information, or look to see if my notes from the appointment include more detailed instructions, but it’s likely true that there’s no concrete timeline for something like this [I messaged him and there isn’t]. I should treat it like any wound, albeit one that I should take incredibly good care of since I don’t want to scar too badly. I’d hate to go from being self-conscious about a mole to being self-conscious about a scar.

It is going to take a while to heal and then it will probably take me a while to get used to it being gone. Hopefully, in a few weeks or a couple months or however long it takes for this to heal, I’ll be able to look at my face and not feel self-conscious or like my attention is being conspicuously drawn to my upper lip. I don’t think I’ve ever had a change as permanent and sudden as this one, so hopefully it doesn’t weigh on my mind too much. New haircuts rarely register to me for more than a couple days after getting them, but I’ve been getting haircuts for my entire life and haircuts are about as impermanent as changes to your body can be. I mean, a haircut lasts a couple hours at most. After that, your hair has grown and things have already begun subtly shifting. To weeks later, it’s barely the same thing anymore (at least as far as most shorter haircuts go. The difference is much less pronounced if your hair still fairly long).

Still, I can’t help but hope that I’ll feel better. I’ve wanted the mole gone for as long as I’ve had opinions about my own appearance and it’s difficult to imagine that even a nasty scar would make me feel as self-conscious. After all, I won’t be able to see it every single moment my eyes are open anymore. At least I won’t accidentally cut it while shaving anymore. Once it has all healed up, I shouldn’t have to worry about it randomly bleeding because I’ve poked or pinched my upper lip in an odd way. I just have to put up with something a bit more obvious and impactful for a few weeks and then I’ll probably never need to think about it again. Which, honestly, is my preferred manner of handling things like this. As long as it doesn’t require or catch my attention, I’ll be happy.