stitch mystery

WARNING
This blog entry includes graphic descriptions of medical procedures. It is not appropriate bedtime-story material for small children and may be offensive to some readers.

In my defense, I was completely unconscious. I’m sure you understand why, after surgery, I didn’t want to be poking and prodding the raw areas of recent scalpel activity. And, having eyesight about on par with a mole, I certainly couldn't see anything in the bathroom mirror. Not that I wanted to. If it was someone else's sutures and incisions, blood and pain, then I'd be right in there to have a look, but not when it's my body. I'd just rather not look or feel or even think about it, thank you, until it heals up.

So, two weeks after surgery, while doing some tentative exploration of my left side, I was surprised to discover a stitch in an area previously covered by a bandage. You may remember how pleased I was to discover that my wedge resection surgery required only one stitch (which was removed a week ago). Oh well, not the first time I’ve been wrong.

Back to the “new” stitch, one of an almost transparent thread rather than the heavy black of the other one. It looked, and felt, like lightweight fishing line. I was easily able to unravel several running stitches until I came to a dead stop. I couldn’t find the end of the thread. It went in but didn’t come back out. Perhaps, I thought, pulling the thread would cause a nearby dimple in my flesh that would indicate the other end.

No dimple, just the opposite, and enough “discomfort” that I soon stopped testing my theory. I was faced with the perplexing situation of a single thread coming out of my chest, seemingly from somewhere deep inside. I told myself, “You can’t get there from here,” and made an appointment at the Pender Harbour Health Clinic.

The nurse appeared with her suture-removal instruments, laid me out on the examination cot and flipped on an startlingly bright overhead light as I explained my little adventure. Using the location of the stitch (immediately below my left breast) as an excuse for my incompetence in both locating and removing it, I pointed out my age (55) and the nature of gravity (it sucks). A couple of years ago (okay, decades), a perkier boob would not have concealed the stitch nor would it have required an extra hand to hold it out of the way while said stitch was located and removed.

This reminds me of a guaranteed side-effect of any serious illness… it destroys every last shred of one’s modesty, often before diagnosis, while various tests are being performed.

I am certain that a substantial number of men die of prostate cancer diagnosed too late because they refused to let another man (the doctor) insert a finger into their rectum. Likewise, I believe that women die because they delayed or outright refused both pap tests and mammograms. And, I totally understand their decision. I allowed myself to be subjected to a pap test every ten years, but I swore that my last one was indeed my last one.

I couldn’t imagine how having an additional person in the room would lessen my embarrassment, so I waived my right to have a female nurse present at the procedure. When you find yourself naked from the waist down, flat on your back with both knees in the air and both feet in chrome “stirrups” designed and positioned to spread your legs apart in a most indecorous manner, you can’t really do much more than grit your teeth.

Enter the doctor, an elderly, bespectacled man prone to unintelligible muttering, carrying a plastic-wrapped, plastic speculum.

I think it was blue and I think the packaging was made by the company that makes those potato chip bags which are impossible to open without scissors.

Dr. Cairns didn’t have scissors, so he did what we all do with a potato chip bag, he pulled it apart. We all know what happens to the chips in those bags; when the bag gives, the contents fly everywhere.

The plastic packaging finally gave, and the speculum went zooming across the little examination room, hit the wall and bounced several times across the floor to come to rest under my cot. I was mortified, but Dr. Cairns retained his composure. A quick study, he used scissors to open the second speculum package.

The next step is insertion of the speculum into the vagina. Then, the instrument of torture is ratcheted open to allow a tissue sample to be removed from the cervix. This is where embarrassment is overcome by physical discomfort. One wonders why the damned thing must be spread open so wide.

The tissue sample is small, the instrument to remove the sample is small, but one feels like room is being made to drive a full-sized pickup truck up one’s vagina. Yes, one wonders. And one grits their teeth even harder while they lie there, reminded of a butterfly impaled on a pin, repeating the mantra, "It’s almost over, it's almost over, it's almost over."

But it wasn’t over yet. Dr. Cairns, with one hand gripping the speculum and the other holding the instrument to take the tissue sample, developed a sheen of perspiration on his face. Then his cokebottle-thick glasses slid down his nose and fell off. I can’t say that he panicked, but he was certainly agitated, one hand still gripping the speculum, as he fumbled around for his glasses, which had landed on the cot between my legs.

Seconds were hours, it seemed, but he finally retrieved his glasses, got them back on his face and completed the procedure. He quickly left the room, without a word, and I vowed that I would rather die of cervical cancer than be subjected to that kind of humiliation again.

The punch line? Several months ago, at St. Mary’s Hospital, a female doctor performed a pap test. It was quick, painless and without incident. However, it’s still highly unpleasant and I do not intend to have another one. Happily, I have lung cancer, something that can be monitored with non-invasive imaging tests involving high doses of radioactive dye.

Okay, back to the cot in the examination room of the Pender Harbour Health Clinic, wondering what’s become of the other end of that suture thread. The nurse did a close examination and some cursory, gentle pulling. She concluded, “Hmmm. Isn’t that odd.”

I agreed. She did more looking and discovered a small knot, a couple of inches away. Aha! But no, this knot turned out to be yet another stitch, and another with no visible source. Very odd. Then, she found a third, also unrelated, stitch with no visible source. Very odd indeed. She decided to call in the doctor to have a look.

Dr. McDowell solved the mystery instantly. “Those are dissolvable stitches,” he said. It turns out that a dissolvable stitch, when exposed to air, becomes hard and appears to be a normal stitch. I silently wondered if dissolvable stitches were made of the same material as biodegradable garbage bags, which are fine until they get wet.

Dr. McDowell told us that the stitches would eventually drop off, after they had dissolved from beneath the surface of the skin, or they could be cut off in a way that would cause them to retract into the flesh, facilitating their disappearance. This latter procedure involved more tugging and pulling, so I told the nurse that, because it sounded like so much fun, I would go home to do it myself.

And, one of these days I probably will. If they don’t fall off before I get to them.