If you sit around long enough, something will happen

Today was a slow day for me. Tomorrow we have exit interviews, removal of the central line, and an inhaled antibiotic (pentamidine, to prevent pneumocystis infection). So that will be plenty, but today was a little bigger for Liz than for me.

Liz wisely had taken advantage of all the down time to get a skin survey from the dermatology clinic, and sure enough they found a basal cell carcinoma (that's the most common and least dangerous kind of skin cancer) just around the corner from her right eye.

Even though a BCC won't kill you it can be very inconvenient to remove, and this one put up some fight. She's got a lot of stitches and the swelling to go with it.  Now we can really scare the children when we walk down the street together, me with my shiny skull and black face mask, and Liz with her eye not-quite-a-patch. Before they started surgery, a professional photographer came in with a big SLR and reflectors to take what are no doubt exquisitely detailed images of Liz's tumor. There was a minor epiphany when we realized that this was exactly the source of those horrible photos that grace every dermatology textbook, though in fairness Liz's BCC was not nearly horrible enough to make it big. She did sign a release, though.