Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The final diagnosis on Blake's finger

So today was Blake's appointment with the dermatologist. We waited for about 30 minutes (we were about 35 minutes early) and then he came in and asked what was up. So, we told him the entire back story and what the ER did and how it was starting to grow back. He looked at it, asked if it bled A LOT and it took forever to stop bleeding, we said yes, and he told us what it was.

It was a (drumroll please) pyogenic granuloma. And me saying that explains everything to everyone, right? Mostly they happen in pregnant women and horses... But, for you people that stare blankly at those words like I do, here is a short synopsis of it.

Pyogenic granuloma is a relatively common skin growth. It is usually a small red, oozing and bleeding bump that looks like raw hamburger meat. It often seems to follows a minor injury and grows rapidly over a period of a few weeks to an average size of a half an inch. The head, neck, upper trunk and hands and feet are the most commonly sites.

And in common english, what happened was when Blake smashed his finger, it over-healed instead of just healed, creating a huge mushroom looking liver thing. The skin sometimes does this, and then the pyogenic granuloma occurs.

So, he took Blake's finger, numbed it, cut off the growth that was growing back (shaved it off is more acurate), and then burned the entire area. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen. Blake got REALLY light headed and then he turned white as a ghost. So he had to lie back down for about 10 minutes, then he was fine. The doctor was super nice about it and I thanked him over and over again because he didn't back away and he knew what it was. You have no idea what a tremendous relief it was knowing that it was a normal thing and what a simple proceedure it was to take off.

Right after this we went and had Glade's Flu Booster shot. All in all, we saw doctors for 50 minutes today... Blake's app was at 1, then we were on our way home from Glade's at 1:50. It was absolutely fantastic!

1 comment:

  1. I am glad they were able to diagnos it. Nothing's worse than not knowing. Your imagination goes wild. Or at least mine does.

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