Stitches OUT

I am a happy Laura. The stitches are gone, and I can have a facial expression again.

Not being able to move your upper lip tends to cramp a person's style. So I'm glad I can use it again.

I still have stitches INSIDE, the deep tissue sort. They will dissolve on their own. That's why my the cut is still so puffy. The test on the mole came back...and it was perfectly benign. Thank goodness. It's always nice when you think something is healthy and it actually is.

The doctor advised me to massage it often and to use a cream, or even a scar cream. So I went to the pharmacy and they had one sort of scar cream and then generic cream. I compared ingredients--not even close to the same. This made me unhappy and also poor, because I had to spend over $38 for that stupid cream. I wanted to tell the pharmacy girl, Wow, it's expensive to avoid permanent disfigurement," when she rang up the cream, but I stopped myself because that's just the sort of weird thing I say to cashiers all the time, and they never laugh. I think it creeps them out. I thought it would be worse to be creepy with a red slash down my lip, because they'd wonder "...did she get that in a knife fight because she's crazy?" and I would be like, "Scar cream, yay!" 

Then they would print off my picture from the security camera and put me in some kind of file.

Plus it was not that girl's fault that the scar cream was so expensive.

Still, better to try than not. If the lip heals just as is, though, the cut is only a thin line, so I'll have a thin line for a scar. I've had incisions that were WAY worse. A scar would be my excuse to wear lipstick at all times, buying all the colors that suit me, so I'm okay with that. Anything is better than that mole, which would tear off halfway at random times when I was wiping my mouth after eating or blowing my nose. Then I would look like the victim of a violent crime, and one time Mum wanted to take me to the doctor for stitches.

One more trip back to the doctor in a few weeks, at which point he will stare at my lip again and tell me I'm fine, go away. The mole saga is almost over.