The mystery of being a male and having to ‘attack, conquer’ or ‘master’ everything is not something I have succeeded in expressing well. I try very hard to ‘illustrate’ my thoughts from time to time… okay, anytime I tell my boss something, he puts his feet on his desk, because he knows anything and everything I say has a story that leads around the barn and back when the answer could be a simple “Yes sir” or “No sir”.
However, as you know, I can be somewhat ‘driven’ and ‘loquacious’ when I feel something needs to change, and be described. Hence the weight loss stuff. When I got the doctor’s report that my ‘fatness’ was getting real, I got very focused and serious.
Well, not many years ago, when I was working more on gaining fat and not losing it, I started getting these things called ‘skin tags’. I didn’t know what they were so I went to the doctor. I’ve known this doctor for years and we have as much of a friend relationship as patient/doctor relationship.
He told me straight up, “Jeff, your weight gain is causing you to get these. Not all come from excess weight but in your situation that is the deal. They are called ‘skin tags’.” He then went on a long explanation that I shouldn’t remove them because they can be very painful and usually have a nerve ending in the center. To which, he gave me something to numb the surface pain and pulled out a scalpel and cut it off ‘the right way’. It still hurt but okay, he’s the doc.
Great… no biggie, paid my co-pay and went back to growing more tags via a lot of fast, greasy food! Months later another skin tag grew. I didn’t like it and felt, after watching the doctor do this, I could do it as well.
Have you ever had that thought? You know you have!
It was on the side of my neck down near where my neck and shoulder meet. Okay, I know, I have no neck but this works for the illustration. I looked around the house for something sharp and found my ‘big daddy’ toenail clippers. Things things will bite the head off a nail so I figured this would work fine. In my mind, the stuff the doctor used didn’t really do that much to ease the pain and I figured, ‘I am a man, I can take it’. This isn’t going to be like one of those scenes in a movie where someone bites down on something while they remove a limb. This will be ‘easy peasy.’
I went to the bathroom mirror, doused the ‘nail clippers from hell’ in alcohol, because that is what any smart person does when they are trying to disinfect home surgical instruments, and got down to a ‘man’s way’ of removing a skin tag.
I looked in the mirror and what I should have seen was a idiot but instead I saw myself… oh yea, guess the idiot was there, but I lined up the clippers over the skin tag and took a deep breath.
Everything in me said this wasn’t going to be a big deal and these clippers, which normally have a crunch, snap, break through that ‘brick’ sound when they do their job, wouldn’t have a problem removing this tiny, little, small, insignificant extra piece of skin.
1… 2… 3… and then I gave it the beans. I clipped down hard thinking it would just be done in a split second.
Instead… a pain like something was trying to pull my intestines out through the side of my head hit me. My whole neck went into shock and the pain was so incredible I lost my breath. I hollered and then thought… ‘hold it, I am man, I shall not be conquered by this little extra piece of skin!’ There was no way I was going to spend another $30.00 dollars on a co-pay, nor take the time off work, to do something anyone could do. So I squeezed harder and literally went against the wall fighting the pain, as if it was some monster intent on killing me, taking my manhood, and proving that ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ was, had me and was stronger than I was. It’s odd to describe this battle as if some giant serpent had attacked my neck and I was fighting for my life when in reality, I was the one creating the pain.
I kept up the pressure and just held on like a snapping turtle. I was beginning to think that these ‘clippers’ that can cut through my toe nails should have easily killed this project in a second yet, I could tell by how the skin on my neck was moving, that the clippers and I were still ‘one’.
One last time and once more into the breach I went. I clamped down as hard as I could, using my imagination, seeing the teeth of the clippers, coming together and the tag falling away. However, I was also seeing red… the pain felt as if my brain was exploding and all of the cabbage was falling out. It was much like an electric shock except the voltage was controlled by me and the more determined I was, the more painful the world became. If it were voltage, I would be able to light up every house in the city. Man, it hurt!
The pain was so bad I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was seeing stars and I had to admit it, I had been bested and beaten by this little, small, insignificant, skin tag. The doctor wasn’t joking when he said it would hurt and there was a nerve ending in the middle of this thing. Clearly, I had the ‘mother of all nerve endings’ in this thing and it was going to make sure there was a DIRECT line of communication between my neck and my pain receptors. I released the pressure on the clippers and pulled them away to realize why it felt like someone was trying to cut through my neck. .
I actually hadn’t hit the skin tag at all, but did succeed in picking out ½ inch of my skin on the side of my neck in one fell swoop!
“Good Lord in Heaven did I hit an artery?!” I said out loud.
Now, the result of me attempting to decapitate myself ½ inch at a time had equated the tag still living, breathing and laughing at me. The other result was here I am, a single man, in his 40’s, with a massive hickey on his lower neck and no joy to show for it.
How am I gonna explain that one? The tag lived for another day and I decided not to share this little gem till now. The tag eventually died but it long left an impression on me.
Note to self – let the doctor do the cutting from now on and pray hard for my son!
🙂
