So July 12 I had surgery. I have pictures of it, so if stuff like this makes you squeamish you might want to close one eye (so you can see when the pictures are over) and scroll past the pictures. They aren't THAT bad (in my opinion.) But first a description of why I needed surgery. I'll post the start and end of the surgery pictures in case someone wants to skip them. There isn't any blood. It's just presurgery, stitches and the scar.
Here's why: I had something weird start growing on my right leg about a month or so after Matt was born. At first I thought it was an ingrown hair, and then it got bigger so I thought it was a wart. It just kept getting bigger...I was watching the news one night and it talked about skin cancer being on the rise and showed a picture of carcinoma. I was like O_O because it looked just like (at least to me) the thing on my leg. I called the doctor the next day and scheduled an appointment. (This was in June when I did all of this.) I had my doctor appointment and the doctor said it wasn't carcinoma (hallelujah!!!) but it appeared to be an "infected hair folicle" and if it wasn't removed it would keep getting bigger and bigger. The doctor referred me to a surgeon and I decided to get it removed a couple weeks later. So on July 12 surgery took place and they removed it. By then it was starting to itch and hurt a little...and indeed it was getting bigger. I'm glad it got removed when it did. Here's before, during the healing and after pictures.
* START OF SURGERY PICS *
Here it is pre surgery (that was actually taken in the doctor's office via cell phone camera right before they were going to remove it.) I took a side picture so it can be seen how thick it is.
View from the front. Looks like the bottom part of the pic got messed up a little in transmission from my cell phone to computer.
A few days after surgery. 5 stitches.
After it's all healed up. This pic was actually from earlier today, so this picture is about a month after the stitches were removed.
* END OF SURGERY PICS *
They sent the removed thing to a lab to have them verify it wasn't cancer (it's standard procedure when something is removed to send it to a lab for tests.) It wasn't cancer. The surgeon confirmed it was totally random and there's no sort of increased risk to get another one. The surgeon said my leg was a really weird place for one to be though. So hopefully I won't ever have another one.
In other news, I went skydiving!
We (me and Robby, my younger brother) were going to go skydiving in June but the day we were planning on going it was cloudy and raining and when the rain cleared up it was super windy so we weren't able to jump. We rescheduled for July 23 and that's when we were able to jump. I've got a few pics of it. Let me start off by saying it was fun and I would go again if money wasn't a factor. Also as a side note, I had the stitches I posted about above while I was skydiving, just to clarify the timing. The stitches were in but weren't getting removed until the following Tuesday.
Getting all rigged up. We did tandem jumping, which is basically we aren't in charge of anything besides following directions. Total we had 5 people inside the plane and the pilot...so 6 people total. We had to get up to 10,500 feet elevation before we jumped.
I was first to jump. When it came time to jump they opened the door, and the instructor (the person I jumped with) sat on the very edge of the plane so my butt was in the air, 10,500 feet IN THE AIR and tipped forward, backward, forward and we were out of the plane. On the way down I was thinking "maybe this wasn't such a good idea..." (kind of a little late) and then after a few seconds it became more fun once I convinced myself I may as well enjoy the ride xD. It was too loud to be able to talk because we were falling at least 100 (I think actually 110-120) miles/hour.
The free fall part lasted maybe 10-15 seconds and then the instructor opened the parachute and it was amazing. We could talk without having to raise our voice...it was just like talking on the ground. We did a few 360 turns (which was a whole turn). Oh my, get ready to live! Those turns were more fun than a roller coaster x 2398579823785. I'm not sure who is who in the picture. One is me and one is Robby.
The ride down lasted maybe 12-15 minutes...? I'm not sure but it was super fun. As I said earlier I would go again if given the chance and money wasn't an issue. It cost well over $100 but I figured you don't get a chance like that all the time, so I decided to take it. I don't know that I'd ever want to go solo because I'd be very concerned I'd mess something up and die. (You have to go through extensive training to be able to jump solo though.) I also didn't get a video because that would have been an extra $100 or so. No thanks.
At the beginning before jumping you have to fill out a bunch of paperwork which basically says multiple times that you could DIE or get severely injured and if that happened you/family members/anyone could not sue them and knew that if they tried they would lose because of the documents you're signing. I thought that was pretty funny. They also had about 45 minutes worth of training which they said again multiple times that you could die. They also said like 97% of the time someone dies it's because the passenger wasn't following directions and messed it up.
I have to admit, at the end of the paperwork and training I was seriously reconsidering if I really wanted to jump or not xD. I decided I may as well since I wouldn't get that chance every day and that was something I wanted to do in my lifetime...Mark's mom also jumped as well. She was the first of all of us to go which I thought was pretty funny. She wasn't planning to jump when we went in June and couldn't due to the weather. She went through the training and decided that she waned to jump. xD
So, I've officially been skydiving! It was fun. It's funny to me that I was too scared to ride the Ripcord at Worlds of Fun, yet went skydiving xD. Haha. I imagine I won't be so scared now though if I decide to ride the Ripcord.
