I’ve had a small sore on my right leg for the last four years. With everything else settling down I was finally able to go to the dermatologist and have it checked out. This is about the sixth time I’ve been to the dermatologist to be checked out. This time he took a biopsy and determined it was a basal cell.

When they find a basal cell they bring you into the office and do a procedure where they take off one layer of the sore and put it under a microscope and see if there’s any cells on the edge. If there are basal cells in the cut, they cut little more until they get all of it. This all started at the size of an erasure by the time they decided to do something with it was the size of a nickel. The size that they removed was about the size of a silver dollar. The sizable hole they left behind was too big to be sutured closed. So that means they have to do a skin graft to close the hole.

They took the extra skin from the bottom of my right bicep. They say everybody has extra skin under their biceps. Until the graft took hold I would have to stay off my feet. This would take about 10 days. The biggest problem I had during this time was dialysis. During dialysis they keep a blood pressure cuff on you and take your blood pressure every 30 minutes. They can’t use my left arm because of the fistula, they can’t use my right arm because of the graft,they can’t  use the right leg that’s where they put the graft. So all that was left was my left leg.

My legs are not in the best condition and when they take blood pressure from your legs it is higher than when they take it from your arms. I also usually run a little high in the blood pressure department. After the 10 days they took off the bandages and determined that the graft was growing well. I thought this was going to be great and I was going to be all done and  just let it finish healing but oh no. They are going to be sending out a nurse to change the bandages every couple of days. Then in about two weeks the doctor will take another look and reevaluate at that time. That means I can walk around and still bowl on days as long as I can get my foot with the bandage in a shoe.