Monday, October 22, 2007

The Looming Liquid Nitrogen Shortage

I went to the dermatologist today for my six-month checkup. As always, she came into the examination room with a container of liquid nitrogen in one hand and a cotton swab in the other and attacked my skin. Ow! Ow! I hate that stuff and the process involved - i.e., freezing off various growths before they can become dangerous - but it's the price I pay every six months for being red headed and fair skinned and for having tanned and roasted every summer as a kid and teenager. Most of that in Africa, to boot.

People are affected differently by the application of LN2 to them. Daniel once told me that it didn't bother him at all and felt just like a pin prick. For me, it's very painful. I can feel every cell screaming in agony, I tell you!

Okay, that's enough self-pity for one post. Now I await the blossoming of red splotches on my forehead, so that I'll look evilly diseased just in time for the local science fiction convention, Mile Hi Con, next weekend.

Oh, and if you go to a doctor and need something frozen off but are told that it will have to wait because of a nationwide shortage of liquid nitrogen, you'll know why.

2 comments:

Lahdeedah said...

Hee heee...

my hubby is red haired and fair skinned and a sunshine boy himself...

...

hee hee...

he's going to the dermatologist too... for the same reason....

oh but i mean

ouch, that's awful.

David said...

At least she didn't cut anything off, this time.

She always says, "I'm sure it's nothing. It's probably fine. Let's just send it to the lab to be sure."

And I spend the next ten days assuring myself that it was probably nothing and just fine and hypochondriacally imagining the worst.