Xander Week 124 – The Bump…
July 20, 2009
In my humble parenting opinion Xander is perfect. His height is perfect, his weight is perfect, his eyes and nose are perfect – I could go on and on. Xander was born with a small “skin tag” next to his ear. This was courtesy of me, since I have the very same skin tag next to my ear. Over the years it has shrunk and is hardly noticeable to anyone besides me, and I hadn’t even thought about it in a decade until Xander was born.
During his first few months we discussed it with his doctor, and they offered to remove it for us, or leave it. We figured since it was just a little skin tag and hardly noticeable, we’d leave it. If Xander decided when he was older (in my mind I was thinking about 13-ish) then we could discuss having it removed.
Flash forward two plus years, and Xander starts showing us his “bump”. If you ask him, he’ll tell you “this is my bump, it bothers me.” Trying to get a two year old to expound on the word “bothers” is more trouble that it’s worth. But, I certainly wasn’t expecting this statement so soon! Knowing that we’d have his annual checkup in six months or so, I told Xander we could talk to the doctor about when we saw him in September.
On Friday, I received the letter from our doctor’s office letting me know the date and time of our next visit. But this visit was scheduled with one of the nurse practitioners. I respect most of the nurse practitioners at this office, and they give us great service, but for this particular visit I really wanted to speak with a pediatrician. When I called to reschedule (2 months in advance) I was told that there weren’t any physical appointments available with a pediatrician until November. So now we have an appointment on Friday to discuss Xander’s skin tag.
I guess when I told Xander we could talk about it with the doctor, I didn’t worry about it because that was months and months away. Even then, it would not be the primary focus of the visit, so we would still probably have to schedule a visit or two after that before the procedure itself. Now all of the sudden the visit is here. The time has come. We always said that if Xander wanted his skin tag removed, we’d help him do that, but I didn’t think he’d make this decision at the age of two. I thought he’d be older and better able to understand the ramifications of the process.
Am I crazy to be following the requests of my two-year-old? It’s not like he can change his mind later once we’ve done it. I also don’t know enough about the process – how do they go about removing it? Do they use any sort of pain medication? What is “recovery” like? Will there be a scar? I have lots of questions for the doctor of course. It just feels weird to have an appointment to talk about cutting off a piece of my little boy…
Oh Sara, I wish I had a response for you, all I can say is, if it was Carver I would probably be following his request…CRAZY that we listen to our “almost” 3 yr olds…as for the docs office, we must be at the same one. I just got Mazzy’s “scheduled” 9 month appt in the mail…for 12:50pm…don’t they know kids take naps and stuff????And I can’t even call to reschedule it until the end of August and maybe I can get her in sometime in October???Sorry, just annoyed..