This is the state of myself now.
I have benign growth on my facial skin, called skin tags. I think it’s hereditary. I was okay with them when they first appeared in high school, but as years have gone by, more and more have surfaced that it’s become a nuisance to me. At times, they can hurt.
I’ve been toying with the idea of getting rid of them for the longest time. My skin specialist, Dr. Md Noh, would tell me to be patient and have assured me that we could proceed once I’m done with Roaccutane, just months before my wedding date. Since I’m on my last round of the pills, I’ve been given the green light.
On Thursday, I was asked to sit at a different waiting room inside the clinic. The nurse came and applied dots of numbing cream all over my skin tags and for one good hour it looked as if my face was infested by white chocolate chips. Good thing I was the only person in the room.
After an hour, the nurse came with a needle. She wiped my face and then poked a bare area on my face.
“Do you feel pain?”
“A bit.”
Now she poked the area where the numbing cream was applied.
“Do you feel pain?”
“No.”
I couldn’t feel anything. Gasp. The numbing cream really numbs!
She led me into the operating room. Not exactly the operating room, but it’s where skin treatments are done. I was asked to lie down on the old school clinic bed which could’ve used a better pillow. They’d be dealing with light, so the doctor made me wear super dark goggles to shield my eyes.
Then he began the procedure. He held a pen-like device and placed the tip on my skin tags. When the tip touched my skin tags, it smelled as if my skin was burning. He was zapping the skin tags with laser, one by one! Zzt. Zzt. Zzt. It sounded like that in my head.
I didn’t feel much pain and by right I shouldn’t except for the areas where the numbing cream wasn’t applied. Turns out, the nurse missed a couple of areas. For these areas, I could feel electric going through my skin. It didn’t hurt that much, but since he kept on zapping, it made me teary. If I’d known better, I would’ve ask the nurse to apply the cream all over my face. The pain was exciting, but still tolerable (a lot more tolerable than waxing down there on the week of your period).
The doctor reminded me:
“No pain, no gain.”
Once the doctor was done zapping at least a hundred spots, he let me remove the goggles and let me look in the mirror. I looked nowhere attractive, like the moon. As in, I had tiny craters everywhere. The tags were burned!
“In ten days, your face will be back to normal.”
Okay. Ten days to recover. I can live with that. Just like that time when my skin burned so badly over a chemical peel.
Then I realized. God. I had to return to the office with a face like this -_-‘
I have seven more days to go, until all of these craters turned dark spots fall off. I’d imagined it to be hard, but so far I have enjoyed and had fun answering when people ask:
“Eh, muka you kenapa???”