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May. 17th, 2019 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: societal beauty standards, medical issues (including a bad doctor), arguably body horror (no images in the post itself, though there are images in the Wiki link)]
It dawned on me last night that the proto-pimple on my chin has been there for a suspiciously long time.
I mean, I haven't paid *that* much attention to the state of my chin, so I could be wrong. Maybe it's been multiple pimples coming and going in that spot, not the same bump for several weeks. Maybe it's an ingrown hair.
...or maybe it's another keloid, this time in a spot not easily hidden with clothing.
If I just perpetually looked like I was about to get a pimple there, I could probably deal with that? But the trouble with keloids is that they're *degenerative*: the seven-year-old pair of lumps above my chest were the size of pimples when they were new, and now they're each rough rectangles about 1.5x4.5cm. If 32-year-old me has a 1.5x4.5cm lump on her chin, she's going to have a hard time looking Professional, and that will likely lead to problems.
---
I'll start keeping an eye on it, and if it still hasn't gone away in a few more weeks I'll talk to my doctor and see if I can get a new referral. I don't want to go to the same plastic surgeon she referred me to last time I was considering having keloids treated: he overbooked his schedule--so that *his* patients had to sit in a waiting room for two hours, watching the patients of other doctors come and go--and did not seem to consider "how painful is this going to be, and what can we do to mitigate that" to be an important aspect of a medical procedure. He told me it would be more painful than a flu shot only because I asked; he brushed off my questions about anesthetic, saying that an anesthetic needle would be as bad as the cortisone needle itself. (It was not until afterwards, reading patient forums, that I came across people saying *their* doctors had given them anesthetic *ointments*, and that while it was not perfect it was a big improvement over unanesthetised cortisone injections.)
(possibly he's more used to the beauty-is-pain crowd, rather than an intensely practical, deliberately plain woman who sought treatment primarily to prevent growing-pains?)
(The treatment was supposed to be done three times, but I bailed out after the first one because the [boredom + agony] was worse than years of growing-pains combined. Especially after you take into consideration it stinging for over an hour afterward.
The pain and itching from leaving them untreated is fairly mild and infrequent. And there are some clothes I can't comfortably wear anymore because they have a band that hits me in a keloid and irritates it, but it's not *that* big a deal. And I can't wear anything with a low neckline without showing off scar tissue, but I never cared for low-neckline shirts anyway, and if I cared *that* much, well, I routinely go outside in a surgical mask and that probably looks even weirder (but it does wonders at keeping my pollen allergy in check!).)
((but the thing about the surgical mask is that *if* I ever need to look Professional (or otherwise Not Weird) outdoors more than I need to not have a constant sore throat, the option of not wearing the mask is available))
---
(come to think of it, a sufficiently large keloid on my chin might even lead to problems chewing, so there's another point in favour)
It dawned on me last night that the proto-pimple on my chin has been there for a suspiciously long time.
I mean, I haven't paid *that* much attention to the state of my chin, so I could be wrong. Maybe it's been multiple pimples coming and going in that spot, not the same bump for several weeks. Maybe it's an ingrown hair.
...or maybe it's another keloid, this time in a spot not easily hidden with clothing.
If I just perpetually looked like I was about to get a pimple there, I could probably deal with that? But the trouble with keloids is that they're *degenerative*: the seven-year-old pair of lumps above my chest were the size of pimples when they were new, and now they're each rough rectangles about 1.5x4.5cm. If 32-year-old me has a 1.5x4.5cm lump on her chin, she's going to have a hard time looking Professional, and that will likely lead to problems.
---
I'll start keeping an eye on it, and if it still hasn't gone away in a few more weeks I'll talk to my doctor and see if I can get a new referral. I don't want to go to the same plastic surgeon she referred me to last time I was considering having keloids treated: he overbooked his schedule--so that *his* patients had to sit in a waiting room for two hours, watching the patients of other doctors come and go--and did not seem to consider "how painful is this going to be, and what can we do to mitigate that" to be an important aspect of a medical procedure. He told me it would be more painful than a flu shot only because I asked; he brushed off my questions about anesthetic, saying that an anesthetic needle would be as bad as the cortisone needle itself. (It was not until afterwards, reading patient forums, that I came across people saying *their* doctors had given them anesthetic *ointments*, and that while it was not perfect it was a big improvement over unanesthetised cortisone injections.)
(possibly he's more used to the beauty-is-pain crowd, rather than an intensely practical, deliberately plain woman who sought treatment primarily to prevent growing-pains?)
(The treatment was supposed to be done three times, but I bailed out after the first one because the [boredom + agony] was worse than years of growing-pains combined. Especially after you take into consideration it stinging for over an hour afterward.
The pain and itching from leaving them untreated is fairly mild and infrequent. And there are some clothes I can't comfortably wear anymore because they have a band that hits me in a keloid and irritates it, but it's not *that* big a deal. And I can't wear anything with a low neckline without showing off scar tissue, but I never cared for low-neckline shirts anyway, and if I cared *that* much, well, I routinely go outside in a surgical mask and that probably looks even weirder (but it does wonders at keeping my pollen allergy in check!).)
((but the thing about the surgical mask is that *if* I ever need to look Professional (or otherwise Not Weird) outdoors more than I need to not have a constant sore throat, the option of not wearing the mask is available))
---
(come to think of it, a sufficiently large keloid on my chin might even lead to problems chewing, so there's another point in favour)
