Well... the date is April 2nd and i'm recovering from basal cell carcinoma i've had
my reconstruction surgery um and what i want to show you is a few things i filmed like right after
i want to show you the wound after i had mows surgery which is a surgery named after Dr
Frederick Mohs and he invented the surgery in the 1930s so when you get basal cell carcinoma they
always say well you're lucky that's the only cancer you got i've had melanoma there's basal
cell there's squamous cell and there's melanoma and those are some of the skin cancers and you
don't want any of them but basal cell is not deadly unless you just never get it fixed because
what it's basically doing is kind of eating your skin away little by little so what looks like a
little thing on the top is bigger underneath so mohs surgery is this technique where they go in
and they cut the margins and what they call are like even though this thing was little
they want to get the margins they cut around it and they're looking for the cancerous skin and
then they take that into a lab check it so that the next time they cut like in my nostril here
they're only taking cancerous skin so after they cut you and cut out that first cutting of skin
with that margin then they cauterize you they kind of burn the skin around the edge smell burning
meat you go sit in the waiting room patched up while they send that skin to the lab so the next
cutting if they need to do one they're only taking cancerous skin and so it only took me two cuts but
still as you'll see in this video when i show it it's you know not quite the size of a dime
a pretty big hole in the side of my nose and at first i thought it was all the way through it's
not there is membrane underneath but it's kind of right down to that so i just want to let you know
it's pretty graphic if you want to see that so i'm going to put a little warning before i show it
if you if you're squeamish or don't like that kind of thing just don't even watch this video and
that's why i have this bandage right here i have my reconstruction going on but because
it's on the end of my nose i just never realize how much i wipe my face or rub my nose so this
kind of protects me a little bit and it reminds me that i have some skin sewn in there plus a piece
of gauze on top a piece of medicated gauze they put on so uh here's my little journey through the
world of mohs surgery basal cell carcinoma and getting my nose reconstructed as they call it
what you're looking at down there bean probably looking at the bandage on my old man nose here
yeah today i was one of those guys driving back from the dermatologist people look at my window
called what's wrong with that fella's nose he must have got cut in a knife no basal cell
carcinoma this irish skin it's always catching up with me and i went in for my full body skin check
last week and there's a little white thing on my nose right here i've been looking at for the last
year thinking it was nothing it never bled or did anything basal cell carcinoma so today i
went in and i had to go in for mohs surgery and i've got like a big hole cut out of my
nostril tomorrow i go see a plastic surgeon and they're going to see what they can do about it
so i'm just going to put a a photo in of what it looks like when they were done and uh i don't know
if your squeamish don't look because it's just like a big hole going through the side of my
nostril i think somebody took a three-quarter inch dowel sharpen the edge of this one
when you're of irish descent and you're fair-skinned
former redhead you're first in line for skin cancer so this year coming up now i will even be
more vigilant on putting the zinc oxide on my nose and really getting my face
covered but it could have been from sun i got as a kid living in greece back in
1963 64 65 66. the guy could have sewn it together today but he said i would have had a little kink
in my nose that looked like it would've looked like you were sniffing something all the time
only if i was sniffing a peanut butter pop-tart
that's what we're looking at
weird
so i have to put a goop of vaseline or aquaphor on there and re-bandage it every day that's what
i have to do until i get my plastic surgery this coming wednesday where they're going to take some
meat from by my ear here or behind it and sew it into that hole and patch me up and then i heal
woo buddy all right this is the day after my reconstruction surgery so this is what
it looks like it's kind of weird they filled it in there's a little piece of gauze on the outside
so what i do now is just throw a little band-aid over it and i gotta tell you it really didn't hurt
that much after the surgery and last night um they said it would hurt a little bit more right here
with a this is where they cut the skin i haven't seen it yet i can't take this off for a week
and put it here so they took it in front of my ear because it matches my nose the most
and those of you that are curious i am building a control line pathfinder
it's an airplane that looks a little something like that
and uh step by step working on my wing right now i'm gluing down some trailing edge
me and bing say woo buddy i'll secure it six to seven