Skin cancer surgery

    Dad had his skin cancer procedure today. To cut to the chase, it went well, they got everything, and he's no worse for wear. It was a bit of an adventure (well, "ordeal" would be too strong) because they had many surgical patients but only one pathologist. And she or he had to check everybody's tissue samples to say yea or nay as to whether all the cancer had been removed. Also they required us to come a half hour early for his 9:30 appointment. So we had to wait half an hour to start, then they took him back and did the procedure. They put him in a waiting area in back (this one had coffee and sodas and whatnot) and called me back there, too. There we had to wait for about a half hour again, at the end of which they called us into a surgical room and said that they hadn't got it all and they would have to go in again.
    I stayed with him this time. It was not exactly M*A*S*H* level gruesome, though if you're ever given the opportunity to be in a room where wounds are being cauterized, decline. (It didn't smell like burning flesh at least but like burning hair. So only SORT of horrifying.) The surgeon was a cut-up (not a pun), a fellow from Vietnam with a dark sense of humor, so he and I got along. Apparently he had pyloric stenosis as a baby, too, so we shared projectile vomiting stories, to the horror of the nurse. The procedure took maybe five minutes. Then we had to wait on the pathologist again. They let us stay in the same room, though. Maybe 25 minutes later, the doctor and the nurse came back with the happy news that Dad is clear and that we could be on our way. And so we were. He has to come back in a month for a check-up, but that should be a formality. So yaaaaaaaaay!