It’s drained.

Come with me on a medical adventure.

I had my appointment with the podiatrist yesterday. Since he wasn’t my original doctor (who is on vacation), I had to explain the whole history of this cyst and the sippy cup debacle. I started out by saying, “I have a ganglion cyst on my foot.” He smiled and said, “Heh, I can see that,” while staring at the prominent lump. (I knew I would like him from that moment on.)

As soon as I got my story out, he explained that this is old hat. He needed to aspirate the cyst and take out the insides. My response to the aspiration would determine whether I eventually needed surgery or not.

[Side-note: You may be wondering where Lolo was in this whole scenario. Well, she was a superstar sitting in her front row seat, the stroller. When we’re in any sort of doctor’s office, she is a wiggle worm who wants to investigate everything UNTIL the doctor comes in. Once the doc is on the scene, she turns into the perfect audience. I think she senses their authority and that they are going to do things she’ll want to watch. Still, I was a little worried. I had my blood pressure taken recently, and she freaked out when she saw the big band around my arm and the nurse doing something to mama. In the end, she found it all utterly fascinating.]

[Warning: This could be a little gory depending on your tolerance for Discover Health shows. If you’re at all squeamish, skip to the sentence near the end in red.]

First, he numbed the whole side of my foot with an injection of lidocaine which I neglected to watch. Then he pumped the cyst up to twice its size with some sort of fluid. And, then for the peak of drama, he used an 18-gauge needle (which in my state of shock looked as thick as a coffee stirrer) to suck out the cyst’s innards. It turns out that you don’t really drain a cyst because the filling is thick like jelly. He even showed me what he was able to pull out, and I was surprised to see that it was less than a teaspoon. He then finished it all off with a shot of cortisone.

To be frank, it was magical. As soon as he sucked the jelly out, I felt no pressure, no pain, and the bump was reduced to half its original size. Even with the lidocaine, I could feel the release. I have a follow-up appointment next week and am supposed to keep it tightly wrapped until then. He said the success of the treatment greatly depends on the compression I administer with bandages.

All was good. I went home. I performed all the normal evening activities and then went to bed.

With a surge of pain, I awoke around midnight startled by the fire in my foot. I guess the drugs finally wore off and the effects of forcibly disrupting the cyst were setting in. I tossed and turned in distress for 4.5 hours. Motrin sort of eased the misery, but not really. I fantasized about hitting my left foot with a hammer so that the pain in my right foot wouldn’t feel so bad. Alas, morning came and the ache subsided.

I will post a picture once I can kick Matt off the big photo editing computer upstairs. In the meantime, I am off to soak my foot in epsom salts. Nothing like a good foot soak to make you feel old.

I couldn’t have made this up if I tried.

I intended to post a picture of the stitches on my foot this week as I was supposed to have surgery to remove my ganglion cyst Thursday.

While I did have some (a lot of) jitters, I was entirely set to go under the knife. I fasted for 12 hours and was up at 5:30 am to be at the outpatient center by 6:30 with my post-surgery boot in hand. I was led around by a nurse, asked to change into the requisite gown and then shuffled off in my hospital issued slipper socks. I placed all of my belongings in a plastic hospital bag and sat down for the beginning of my anesthesia drip. They had me set to go and were about to insert the IV needle when the doctor came over to mark the foot that would be operated on. He said, “Where is it?”

Me: “Wha? It’s right there.”

Doctor: “Wasn’t it much larger before?”

Nurse: “I’m not inserting this needle until we’re clear that she’s going under.”

Me: “I guess so. I did accidentally drop a super heavy sippy straw cup on it last week by accident and it hurt like fire for four days.”

Doctor: “Ah ha. I bet you ruptured it and it’s dissipated now. It’s your lucky day because I don’t need to operate on it.”

Nurse: “I’ve never heard of someone being saved from surgery because of a sippy cup!”

I was so happy, I all but ran out with my gown waving in the breeze. The doctor did say it could come back but until then I should live my life cyst-free.

He’s Italian.

Meet the man that will be removing my ganglion cyst. Hurray for Dr. Marco.

I’ve had enough of limping along with this bothersome cyst, so I sought out a new foot doctor that would first of all, have a clean office, and second of all, be able to cut this thing out. He’s booked for surgery until January (which is a good sign) and says that it should only take about 10 minutes to remove the cyst. The scar will be fairly large considering how small the cyst is because he has to ensure that he removes every last bit of the mass (yummy) due to the high recurrence rate for ganglion cysts.

And, my instincts were right. He said it was more than plausible that my cyst grew from my repeated trips and twists to my ankle in my Dansko clogs. He said that repeated trauma like that to the same foot can lead to this kind of thing. (As a sidenote, the doctor did seem a little confused as to how I could continually fall in quasi-therapeutic shoes. He knows not my penchant for tripping and falling!)

I’m just focusing on the cool scar I’ll be able to brag about once flip flop season returns. I’m not focusing on the incision. Not at all.