Another wart gone

 I was standing under the shower one January morning when I noticed a small black lump on my chest that didn't use to be there.

So I did the sensible thing and phoned the local health centre to make an appointment. Of course it takes forever to get a GP appointment these days so I had to wait about four weeks. Not ideal, but that's how things are.

Now I've been there before with nasty looking warts, so I was reasonably relaxed about it. More so than my GP, who was quite worried about it and even took a photograph to explain why.

Anyway, the upshot was that the Thursday before we left for Tasmania, I had it cut out. My new GP prefers Louis Armstrong to rugby, so I lay on my back while he worked away and listened to Louie from my GP's spotify account.

I'd talked to him about my going to Tasmania, and suggested using dissolving stitches. He was at first reluctant - apparently there's a higher risk of infection with dissolving stitches - but once he realised the impossibility of my getting to any health centre in Tasmania to get my stitches out we settled for dissolving stitches, a follow up phone call and a script for antibiotics in case the wound started misbehaving, plus my promising to come in to the health centre once I was back to have the nurse look at it to double check it was okay.

Well, when the results came back from pathology it wasn't a nasty malignant wart, just a nasty wart I was probably better off without.

The wound healed nicely, the only problem was that my backpack strap tended to catch the wound so I kept a dressing on it for longer than strictly necessary to protect it.

Obviously, I cleaned, checked and disinfected the area when I changed the dressing and had absolutely zero problems except for some mild irritation from the dressing adhesive - obviously the hypoallergenic dressings weren't quite hypo enough for prolonged use.

This morning I went to the health centre, and spent longer explaining the history to the nurse than she spent checking the wound - everything was fine and as it should be.

And I must say, despite all the problems and under resourcing of rural health care not only did they do a very good job, they listened to me and were prepared to do something a little out of the usual to fit in with my commitments ...