In the voice of Tony Bennett, of course.
Let's see if you can spot the difference:
BEFORE
Hong Kong, June 2014
AFTER
South Korea, August 2014
Any guesses?
If you guessed the mole between my nose and upper lip, you'd be correct.
Here's the thing: I never minded having the mole on my face. On rare occasions it bugged me, but most of the time I forgot it was there. I was also really used to how my face looked with the mole, as it's been there as long as I can remember. So it's not something I'd thought about until recently, but I've been thinking about it seriously. It seemed to be getting slightly bigger in the past few years - not 100% sure of that, but that's how it appeared to me in pictures. I felt that if there was a possibility of it growing more and becoming dangerous, I'd rather just deal with it now when there was no pressure than have to have it removed because it developed skin cancer later on.
*Note: No skin cancer was detected. Removing it was merely for precautionary measures.
But why here in Korea? Honestly, South Korea has some of the best dermatologists in the world. A lot of the top medical students go into dermatology because it's so lucrative here. People here take really good care of their skin and will often have regular dermatologist appointments, like people in the U.S. would go see the dentist on a regular basis. However, compared to the U.S., they offer better treatments and it's also really reasonably-priced.
My friend Michelle was looking into clinics, and as English is her best language (as well as mine), it was important to find a doctor or a clinic with English-speaking staff. Our Korean isn't that great yet. The doctor we saw graduated first in his class at Yonsei medical school, which is one of the top 3 universities in Korea, so we felt like we were in good hands.
We ended up going to Hus-Hu dermatology clinic in Apgujeong, which is a really ritzy part of Gangnam district. That area is famous for having so many plastic surgery hospitals in such a small area. It felt weird going there, but we really liked the clinic. It was reasonably priced too, despite the looks and location.
You know the clinic is classy when they have small hand towels to dry your hands with instead of paper towels.
Just a cool, unrelated thing I noticed at the metro stop in Apgujeong - those rails on the floor are for you to wheel a bike down: just put the wheel between the rails and voila! Meanwhile, you can see some of the ads on the wall for plastic surgery clinics.
These ads were EVERYWHERE in the metro stop advertising for plastic surgery clinics. There weren't ads for anything else, actually. Oftentimes, I thought the before picture was better-looking (and a lot more individualistic) than the after. The after pictures all look the same.
The actual surgery consisted of getting numbing injections into and around my mole area (which was the most painful part of the whole thing), and then the doctor used a CO2 laser to remove the mole. The whole process, including waiting for the area to get numb, took 10 minutes or less, and I had a larger mole than most. I only felt a bit sore about 30 minutes afterwards, but nothing else. They put a bandage on it and gave me more to change it every day or so. I felt ok.
After Michelle was done with her appointment, we started walking to the metro and I felt some wetness on my upper lip and thought it was sweat, because this is Korea in the summer - it's so humid all the time. After gently patting around the bandage with a tissue, I noticed some dots of red and proceeded to freak out inside. We walked back to the clinic and they took me back to the surgical room and had me hold more gauze to stop the bleeding and changed the bandage again. For some reason, I couldn't hold it together back there, and I'm still not sure why. I'm even getting a bit teary just thinking about it now.
It's kind of hard to explain, but here goes: I was nervous about removing my mole before and afterwards when I knew the process was so quick and simple. Even seeing myself with the bandage covering up where my mole used to be was strange and disorienting. I think I'm so used to seeing my mole, to having the individuality of my face in part defined by my mole, that once I couldn't see it, it felt like I was looking at someone different. I know, I'm probably thinking too deeply about this, but I was feeling things pretty deeply for the first time that maybe I'd suppressed. Once it started bleeding, the floodgates were opened and I couldn't push things back anymore. What can I say, my feelings turn into tears sometimes.
Even though the actual surgery was very quick and painless, having it start to bleed and weep a little while walking to the metro stop was a bit traumatic. Nothing like bleeding from the middle of your face to make you feel like a freak.
I had to wear the bandages for at least a week, and I was very self-conscious about it for the first few days, but thanks to kind friends who encouraged me to go out and do things with them and by myself, I was able to ignore and then forget I was wearing it.
I took a few pictures (this one was during class role-play - I was Lee Kwang Soo) of myself, but was careful to hide the bandage in the shadows.
First day without the bandage!
Picture taken last Saturday morning. It had been about 3 weeks since the surgery. There's still a scar, but with a little makeup, it's hard to notice.
So that's my story. My serious, but not-really-serious, story about coming to terms with myself in a Korean dermatology clinic.
5 comments:
Dorthy-that was such a great story. It was very heartfelt. I felt like I was reading something from a magazine article. It was very well written and I liked how you shared your feelings with us. Im glad you are happy. It looks great.
Ditto Marcie's comments. Even though I knew about you going through the procedure I really like what you wrote and the pictures to go with it. What a clever way to get bikes down stairways!
It looks really good! Even if you put make-up on it I couldn't see a thing. It looked really good on the first day without the bandage. I'm impressed!
I seriously wrote an entire page to comment but wasn't signed in to gmail so now I forgot my thoughts, haha! But I'm glad you had a good experience. I'm not gonna lie, I kinda miss the l
Mole. But you are beautiful with it without it. I liked the part where they used a CO2 laser. My super duper old dermatologist with shaky hands used scissors to remove my mole. SCISSORS!
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