I just got back from having a thingy cut off my arm. Not exactly a medical term, yes, but prior to getting it cut out, we didn’t know what it was.
The doctor said, immediately after taking it out, “Ah, I can tell you exactly what this is. It’s a benign fatty tumor.” Hey, now, no need to call names.
FWIW, it is being sent to pathology to confirm his assessment. I got to take a peek at it after I was all stitched up (a whopping three stitches), and it looked exactly like a chunk of fatty chicken skin. Fun.
It was located right behind my right elbow, and was about a half inch long. It had felt like a ball bearing in my arm, just a little hard knot that aroused curiosity enough for the doc to cut it out. (He’d called it “surgery,” but it hardly seemed worthy of that label…I was in and out in 15 minutes.)
My only concern is that while he was numbing me up, he apparently hit a nerve: I jerked, yelped, and felt a searing pain burning its way up into my right hand, and in particular, my last two fingers. Even now, nearly two hours later, those two fingers still feel tingly (and actually, occasionally feel like cold water is running in their veins). I’m hoping when the local anesthetic wears off, the tingling will fade as well; a somewhat botched root canal left me with strange skin sensations, so I’m a bit paranoid.
Hi Ruffian. I am glad to hear it is nothing serious. If you want you can refer to it as a lipoma. That sorta rolls off the tongue a little better than fatty tumor. It also sounds more serious though, so I guess it would depend on the effect you were hoping for. Take care,
I’ve been trying to find info on this thing (using both “lipoma” and “fatty tumor” in the search criteria) on the web, but outside of a few technical medical sites (dealing with more extreme individual cases), I haven’t found much. I’m just curious to know what causes them, and to read up on them. Pretty much, I’m just curious in general.
Turpentine…from the looks of this thing, I would think it would taste like chicken fat. Mmm…chicken fat.
C’mon, folks, what about the rest of y’all? What have you had cut off your body?
Ruffian, ruffian, ruffian. You’re supposed to take this term and run with it. It’s SURGERY! That justifies time off from work, exemption from doing laundry or heavy lifting, permission to lie on the couch and be waited on, and some dramatic license to groan, wince, and whimper as needed for at least 3 days after the procedure.
I had some icky (read: pre-cancerous) cells sliced off my cervix after an abnormal pap smear, how’s that for TMI?
I also had major surgery to remove a 9-lb mass from my abdomen, but that was a baby as opposed to a tumor.
You want TMI*? I got TMI. Just saw a woman with a half-inch wart that was hanging from her nostril by a thread. Honest, that thing woulda come off if she wiped her nose too hard. (No, it wasn’t a booger. It matched her other, better attached, warts in texture, size, and color.) I wanted to pull out my trusty Swiss Army knife and solve her problem, but I think she’s a little nuts and wouldn’t react well to some stranger coming at her with a knife.
My dog has one of those lipomas in his side. Or a cyst. Mildly gross. Probably have to pay a vet to drain it, although it would be easy enough to do at home. He’s just too much of a baby to sit still while I did it.
(Sorry, I’ve been reading a book on the Elephant Man and my squeamishness circuitry needs to be reset.)
Cranky’s right about milking the surgery angle. How often do you get a chance to ENJOY a recuperation? Most operations leave you feeling yucky.
I love this acronym game you computer people play. Can I guess that means “Too Much Information?”
…You’re right. Ouuwwwwwwch! This thing is actually really hurting. Due to its location–that whole nerve thing–I’m getting shooting pains down my right arm into my hand. Yuck.
And to think I called the doc’s office a few hours ago, curioius that it was still numb. (I dumbly was thinking it’d be like a dental thing–numb an hour or so, then it wears off–instead, I was numb for over 6 hours.)
What stinks is the fiancé had class tonight (and taught all day), so he can’t be around to baby me. Wah!
Teaching will be interesting tomorrow. Lifting and writing on the chalkboard are NOT appealing to me right now.
Oh, and I have to say, the 9lb “growth” totally made me LOL…a rare occasion for me from reading the SDMB! Good job!
Back when I was an active duty Navy Corpsman I had the ultimate ‘see one, do one, teach one’ experience. Every Thursday we had minor surgery clinic. Third day on the job I’m watching a 35 y.o. guy get a mole taken off his back. The next week I’m taking a two lipomas out of a young mans leg. Next week, it turns out that I had a small lipoma on my abdomen. So, I’m teaching the new guy how to remove it, while watching it being done.
Well, I just had a nosejob…so I guess they removed some nose.
A couple of years ago I had a mole on the bottom of my foot removed. That hurt.
It looks like I may have to have something removed from my hand soon, I have a bump near the bottom joint of my middle finger (maybe that finger gets too much of a workout?). It’s getting bigger and is slightly painful.
I had some plica removed from my knee. For all you non technical people what it basicallly equivicates to is scar tissue. After having my knee scoped and getting out of the hospital I was pampered for a month by everyone around me. Normally people heal quicker from having a knee scoped but there was so much debris removed from my knee that it swelled beyond twice it’s normal size. It was a week or so before I could even bend it. Anyways that is just my little story.
Warts removed from both hands. Twelve total. Not disfiguring or anything, but they were making it hard for me to bend my fingers completely, and stuff like that. Novocain, then curetted off. Then the electro-cautery. Burning human flesh smells, as I found out, like a mixture of burning chicken feathers and bacon. This was actually pretty cool-I got to watch everything and since my hands were numb, didn’t feel anything except tugging as the doctor sliced 'em off.
Oh, and the crackling as my flesh rendered, popping, with oily yellow smoke drifting upwards.
Taking a leak with your hands numbed defies all description. Just try it sometime. It’s like trying to find a clitoris while you have mittens on. Blindfolded. While drunk.
I could, however, slap my brother around and not feel it.
That night, though, when the Novocain wore off–throbbing, itching, creeping fingers of pain.
That and I had to wear gloves for a week afterwards.
Have warts on the soles of my feet regularly. Once a month I pry them out with a pocket knife.
Partial connection to Cecil’s column: Had one starting up on my finger once. It was 105F out and VERY sunny. Laid the affected spot on the hottest part of the dashboard and kept it there absolutely as long as I could take it. Let the finger cool a moment and repeated the procedure. Three months later, the dead and dried out core worked its way to the surface. Quick incision with the trusty SAK…
Wife prefers to remove skin tabs with dry ice and big, honkin’ horse needles like they use to drain knees. They’re real sharp and big enough to hold.
If you can’t perform minor surgery on yourself, who can you?
I’ve had one fibrous lump and a half-dozen tiny skin tags removed. The lump was on the left arm just below the shoulder. I had a great chat with the DO that removed it about the history of medicine, the civil war, and lots of other stuff.
The skin tags were basically tinly little pouches of skin that formed in one armpit (TMI?) and at my neckline, under the collar. The Physician’s Assistant that removed them did it without anesthetic - he said it wouldn’t hurt a bit, and it didn’t - until he daubed on silver nitrate or some such. One down, 5 more to go - yeouch!
And now I have another lump on the same spot on the right shoulder. The PA sez mention it whenever I have a physical so he can look at it, but otherwise don’t worry about it.