Poor Ben

***Warning*** pictures included might not be fun for you to see (I’m talking to you Josh sr)

Poor Ben! It has been quite the week for Ben. I posted on Monday that Ben got his wisdom teeth out. He was finally feeling starting to feel better (and be able to eat again) when we dragged him to the doctors again today for another surgery. Don’t get me wrong, he wanted this one, but still no fun for him.
Ben was born with a birthmark on the left side of his head just above his ear. His doctor at the time told us that this birthmark would need to be removed later in life because if left it would put Ben at a higher risk for cancer. Not the thing you want to hear when your baby is just a few days old. So here we are a few years 😝 later. We have talked to the doctors over the years and kept track of it. In this process we learned that the birthmark was really oil glands that grew on top of the skin instead of inside the skin (there’s a name for the birthmark, but it’s long and medical sounding and I totally forgot what they said it was).  We also learned that shaving it off (the doctor shaved it off, not us) will only aggravate the birthmark and make it grow back worse, not get it to go away. And so the process of getting rid of the blasted birthmark finally came to an end today with the (outpatient) surgical removal of it. We had to find a time in Ben’s busy schedule to fit it in. Where Ben can go a few weeks without submerging his head, not so easy for a competitive swimmer. The surgery was actually suppose to be ten days ago (over Christmas break, and a week before the wisdom teeth removal), but the morning of the surgery we found out it was canceled do to an emergency “illness” with the doctor. I will admit it was hard not to assume that the doctor didn’t want to be at work Monday morning (December 30th) after the week off for Christmas. I felt a little (lot) bad today for judging the doctor when he mentioned his appendix had burst 😬 Thankfully everything went well today for Ben and in a few weeks he will feel as good as new. Ben joked that he got a facelift.