Elder and Sister Baxter in New Zealand: August 2020

August 2020 in New Zealand

Dear Readers,

It's deja vu all over again. New Zealand discovered several COVID cased in the general population which could not be traced to a known source so they moved the city of Auckland to Level 3 (forced isolation) and the rest of the country to Level 2 (mandatory social distancing plus other limitations). Our church services were suspended. Other than that, our daily activities are not negatively impacted. We still visit people, exercise outside, and serve in our community.

OK. You will notice the rather obvious addition to my forehead. Looking back over photographs I can see a red mark as early as mid-may though at that time I was not aware of it. It continued to grow and become irritated. We thought it might be a boil but eventually decided that was not correct.

!!! Spoiler Alert!!! The following contains more detail that any of you need to know. However, I wanted to document the details for my memory's sake. Skip over this if you are so inclined.

After it had grown to the size of a large "Fruit Loop", in early June I scheduled an appointment with the local clinic. I chickened-out and cancelled the appointment not wanting to let the Kiwis think I was a sissy American thinking it was only a monster pimple. After a few days is was obvious that it was not a pimple and not going away. I scheduled another appointment. However, being a small clinic, it took another week to get to see a doctor. It was now mid June. In the doctor's office we were assigned to a young resident doctor. He looked at the lesion, poked at it, and said he was going to get a colleague to look at it. The second doctor came in, looked at it a little longer. At that point he summoned a third opinion. By that point we had every doctor in Turangi in the room. They told me it was skin cancer, not too dangerous, a Basal Cell Carcinoma. They scheduled an appointment for a week later to remove it in the clinic.

On the day of the scheduled removal the resident doctor and his supervisor both examined the lesion. The more experienced doctor seemed concerned. He looked, thought, looked again, pondered for a few minutes and then decided against removal. I will soon tell you that was a miracle #1.

A biopsy was taken. That in itself was painful. One stitch was used to close the wound. We waited for a week. In the day of the stitch removal we met with the doctor who now had the lab results. Squamous Cell Carcinoma which is more severe and required a larger area of removal of the cancer. That procedure was beyond the scope of the local general practice. Our doctor submitted an "emergency" order to the nearest facility that could perform the operation - Rotorua Hospital - two hours away.

We now began waiting. The expected plan was for a team of Rotorua staff to travel to Taupo (only 45 minutes drive for us) to perform the outpatient operation. That sounded good. But it was another two weeks before we heard from the hospital. Could we come to Rotorua on Thursday? At this point, any option was good because we were starting to worry about the delays.

August 6th. We were on the road by 7 AM for a 9 AM appointment. The trip was foggy; for most of the way the visibility at times was as low as 200 meters. We arrived safely and a bit early. The staff was ready for us. We met the surgeon and two assistants, we assume nurses. The doctor was a native of Sierra Leone but was raised and trained in Britain.

He got to work quickly. Ruth Ann was sitting is a chair not 8 feet from the operating table. He removed a mass the size of a small walnut. He said he had to go to the bone to get it all. When sewing my head it felt like the surgeon was roping and tying an unruly calf. With the pressure he was putting on the sutures, I thought he was pulling with his legs. Within an hour we walked out of the operating room.

So now we began waiting for the wound to heal and to hear from the lab regarding the examination of the cancer. Our hope and prayer was that the lab would tell us that all the cancer was removed.

Thinking that we would hear from the local clinic to check up on my wound, we waited until the next day (Friday 7 Aug). We received no communication from anyone so we walked over the clinic. Miracle #2 is that at the same time we were about to enter the clinic our GP Doctor was returning from a break. We spoke to him and showed him the un-bandaged wound (with 5 stitches). He examined it on the spot and set an appointment for Monday (10 August) to have it examined again. He wrote a prescription for the antibiotic cream we liberally applied to the wound. As a side note, one young man in our branch on Sunday thought it looked like the wound was closed with "hot glue". If you look carefully at one photo below you can see why he thought that.

Monday came and it appeared as if an infection was starting so I was issued a prescription on oral antibiotics. Another follow-up appointment was set for Wednesday. Wednesday came and so did COVID alert level 2. The clinic rescheduled my appointment to Friday while they sorted out the implications of the new alert level.

On Friday the incision looked good and was starting to heal at the edges. The nurse decided to pull one of the 5 stitches. The pathology report came back from the operation. The margins were clean so the opinion is that the cancer was completely removed. We set another follow up for the next Monday.

On Monday, 17 August we went in to have the remaining 4 stitched removed. THey were painfully removed. I was feeling good so we went for a walk. About an hour after the removal of the stitches, I felt stabbing pains in my head for about 30 minutes.

The next day (18 Aug) we examined the incision and the source of the pain was revealed. The inclusion had separated by up to 1/3 inch at the widest point. I was able to get into the clinic later that afternoon. There wasn't much they could by then so they cleaned the area, bandaged it and sent me home to heal.

At the date of this post, things look good but my incision recovery is probably a month away. I tell people that I won't need much makeup when I play a pirate at Halloween.