Nevus Sebaceous

Nathan's surgery last month was a success.  He has certainly proved to be my easy child when it comes to medical issues!  Aside from a short meltdown over whether or not it was mandated that he wear his scrub shirt into surgery we had no real problems.  In fact, my little two year old walked himself to surgery!  One hand holding tightly to taggie and the other holding the anesthesiologist's hand.  They pushed the gurney down in front of him.  (PS - they put the shirt on him after he fell asleep from the anesthesia!)

Nathan did great!  His surgery took a little longer than anticipated.  The doctor apologized when he came in to give me the report, but stated that the lesion was bigger and wider than he anticipated once he got behind the epidermis.  No big deal though!  He was able to remove the whole lesion, put in a few stitches, sealed the top with glue and covered the whole thing with a steri-strip.

When I met Nathan in the recovery room he was begging for a drink (it had been over 15 hours since he had eaten or drank anything).  He guzzled an apple juice much to the concern of the recovery nurse.  Then immediately asked for 'white bubbles' aka Sprite.  He downed a small soda before they were able to release him from recovery.  We spent a short time back in his room, but Nathan was up and moving before the nurse arrived to check on him so she pretty much discharged us as quickly as possible.  But not before getting one more 'white bubbles' down the hatch.

As we left the outpatient surgical unit Nathan had his first real meltdown of the day in the elevator.  It was between sobs that he informed me he really wanted to eat lunch in the cafeteria before we went home!  So - down to the cafe we went where Nathan successfully chowed an entire personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut.  Clearly the anesthesia did not bother him!

We had our follow up with Dr. Woo last week and got a clean bill.  Nathan still has a little redness under his nose from the surgical site but that will likely remain for several years, fading slowly.  His small scar will do the same.  The pathology report came back from the lab as a "nevus sebaceous" which is basically a type of mole.  According to the doctor these moles tend to turn cancerous in the teenage years.  So had we not made the decision to remove it (all the doctors left it up to us because it wasn't causing any problems at this time) we could have been talking a whole different ball game when he was a young teen, possibly needing to reconstruct the tip of his nose!

Matt and I really made the executive decision to remove the lesion because we feared it would get infected.  The doctors we talked with said the infection could be harder to clear if it was in the cartilage of the nose, so we erred on the side of caution.  Honestly, part of it is because we didn't want any infections or weird complications once Charlie is born in August.  We're anticipating enough complications the way it is....  I guess it turns out Baby Charlie was looking out for his big brother before he even arrived!