Squamous Cells

Tuesday morning we were up and out early to take Don and Jaime to the airport.  They were flying to Miami to attend the annual meeting of the Americas-Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Association.Their son, Elijah, is the outgoing society president.  He'll also be presenting a paper at the meeting.
As we were leaving the airport we saw this.  These riders are from the Air Force Academy.  They come out in the spring to ride the hills and train.  We've seen them before on Gates Pass.

We spent yesterday running errands.  There was a trip to Camping World, Target, Trader Joes and Costco.  There was much time spent in the truck driving driving driving.  We had planned to do a hard ride today, but noooo.  A late afternoon phone call from the dermatologist changed those plans.
We were at the dermatologist's office early this morning.  Jim's little bump on the arm turned out to be a squamous cell carcinoma.  Here he is receiving mass quantities of local anesthesia.

The treatment is to scrape the site and then burn, also known as curettage and electrodesiccation.  It was a new little cancer, it popped up about 4 weeks ago. Larger carcinomas can require surgical removal, but since Jim's was so young and tender it was amenable to this process.  Here we are scraping away tissue.

This is the electrodesiccator.  It is emitting low-power high-frequency high-voltage AC electrical pulses, via an electrode mounted on a hand piece.  You can see the the spark at the end of the tip, burning away Jim's flesh.  Ewwwww!

The dermo-dude did three scrapes and three burns.  It went quickly.  After leaving the office we went home so Jim could rest.   Then we did laundry, defrosted the freezer, vacuumed the bus, noticed the vacuum cleaner was smelling really hot, cleaned out the the vacuum cleaner filter (which is a pain) and then went to the grocery store.  We're tired!