Random Love (anti-rants)
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So as I mentioned on the WAYWT thread, I have a plaster over my nose covering a couple of stitches and a 4mm long hole. This is the result of the removal of what was probably a malignant skin cancer.
Before I tell the story I want to make it clear that I chose this thread because this is a love letter to the Norwegian welfare state. Nothing else. I’m touched by the well wishing I have recieved, but it really isn’t necessary. This was not a scare, this was not anxiety inducing, this was not dangerous. There are people on this forum who are fighting cancer now, people who are cancer survivors, and bare the weight of that, and people who have lost loved ones to cancer. We have forever lost forum members to cancer in the past. What happened to me today was less burdensome than your average trip to the dentist (amiright @Chap ). So this is not a cancer story and I need no support in that respect.
It is a story that started many years ago though. As a young man I drank in a pub in Liverpool called The Swan. They served a mean pint of Bass Ale from the cask. Bass Ale back then was not the chemical pish it is today but a heady, dirty, supremely tasty brew. It had so many impurities the headaches it gave were legendary, as was “Bass nose”, the red swollen and often spotty nose you’d apparently incur from drinking too much, too often. I used to get a pimple on the side of my nose after drinking sessions, and proudly called it “Bass nose”.
This pimple has revisited me in the same spot about twice a year ever since, normally at the end of summer and after Xmas, times when the booze flows freely, and the food is fine. It stopped appearing about two years ago, and instead a permanent waxy red lump about two millimetres in diameter appeared in the same place. I cared not a bit. It wasn’t sore, I have had rosacea since I was young and I figured it was a product of that and my tendency to this singular bit of acne after living well.
Turns out I was right, and when you add sunlight into the mix, things can go wrong. Three weeks ago I visited my GP (healthcare provider in Colonial?), for a check up and she leant over looked at my nose and said, “What’s that”? After an examination, she decided to refer me to a skin specialist, saying “Worst case it is a form of skin cancer that doesn’t spread and won’t kill you. It may also be nothing”. I said ok, and went on holiday.
I got my appointment and turned up at 0800 this morning to meet a very bright and efficient skin doctor. She took one look at it under a weird light and said “We need to take that out, could you lie down there please”. I looked askance, and she said very matter of factly, it is a tumour, and it may be malignant. She explained that the rosacea, and an enlarged sebaceous gland and the capillieries were all twisted up in there. If it wasn’t cancerous now, it probably would be at some point. I said «Alrighty then».
In came the nurse, cue bright light, a local anesthetic and some nifty scalpel work, and five mins later I was on my way out the door. I need to go back in a week to get the stitches out and they’ll let me know if it was malignant or not, although she thinks it is. Either way it doesn’t matter as she was very clear that it was all gone now.
The best part of this is, the entirety of the contact with the health service, from the GP, to the speedy scalpel specialist, cost me about 25 mins of my time and a grand total of 10 dollars. I’m absolutely buzzing off of that. Hurray for Norway.
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The best part of this is, the entirety of the contact with the health service, from the GP, to the speedy scalpel specialist, cost me about 25 mins of my time and a grand total of 10 dollars. I’m absolutely buzzing off of that. Hurray for Norway.
This section here though is completely unintelligible to me . 25mins in a doctors office? 10$ for the entire thing? Is this written in English..?
All jokes aside - Thanks for sharing Reuben and glad all is well with you!
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It cost less than a case of Bass!!!
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And here I was thinking being diagnosed with ànd operated on for testicle cancer in a matter of five days and costing me just over 100€ was a pretty sweet deal!..
Fucking Norway, man!..
If we are going to compare (which we probably shouldn’t), , I think five days and €100 for removing an entire gonad is at least as brilliant if not more so than nicking out about a gram of nose.
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I'm gonna ask your doctor how much it would cost to sew my ball to your nose… I'd like to believe my urologist still keeps mine in a jar in a drawer somewhere...
I’m sat here working on a response, and I’m ashamed to admit I can’t. The whole testinose/snoutbollock image is too much for me.
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Step aside Rueben I got this… @neph93
If they actually performed that weird surgery, you would always have a "tickle" on one side of your nose.
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If they actually performed that weird surgery, you would always have a "tickle" on one side of your nose.
[emoji38][emoji38][emoji38]
Ballsy move mate [emoji6]
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HUGE thanks to @henry_david and @LewisStonehouse and @popvulture for convincing me to get a pair of Birkenstocks…. Foot pain is completely gone. They are still achy but my limp and agonizing pain is completely gone. I can't even tell you how much I appreciate this.
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@Filthy:
HUGE thanks to @henry_david and @LewisStonehouse and @popvulture for convincing me to get a pair of Birkenstocks…. Foot pain is completely gone. They are still achy but my limp and agonizing pain is completely gone. I can't even tell you how much I appreciate this.
Yes!!! I didn't know that was a regular problem for you, Mike. I'll say that I went many years without them and now I have Arizonas, Bostons, and Londons so that I can wear Birks for all occasions/weather scenarios. Birks are truly life savers. Which ones you got now?
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@Filthy glad they're working for you, man! They're so comfy, especially after you give them some time to mold to your feet. Mine are sore as hell lately as well, not sure what's going on but I'm pretty convinced I'm just getting old and the feets are mad at me about jogging. Just ordered some Adilette slip-ons for around the house — they're another classic for soothing the dogs.
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I got the Londons.
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Speaking of Warren Zevon, @Filthy , I picked up his biography by his wife I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. I haven't yet read it, but it looks amazing and has a foreward by Carl Hiaasen, an author whom I really enjoy who apparently was buddies with the Zevons.
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That's awesome
