An Update From My Face

It's been nearly four weeks now since I had some minor surgery on my face. For those of you following along, I made a decision a few months ago to have a few moles removed from my face. As a kid, they were awesome beauty marks that made me the envy of the playground, but as I got older, they had slowly increased in size to the point where they were interfering with shaving and what-not. Two of them were fairly flat, but the one on my cheek was raised slightly, and would get nicked from time to time by my razor (at which point I'd spend the next few hours trying to get it to stop bleeding). The event that put me over the edge was when my 11 year old niece pointed one out a while ago, which made me a bit more self-conscious of it than I had been before.

I've been taking photos of the healing process, and I'll post those at some point. But for now, things are pretty much back to normal. I had the stitches out after the first week, at which point all the incision sites were still a bit swollen and red. At the end of week two, things were still a bit pink, but the one on my cheek and the one on the middle of my lip had started to heal fairly nicely. The one on my left-upper lip though had gotten a bit more red, and was starting to look infected. At that point I started applying more polysporin, which helped slightly.

The infection wasn't really going away by week three, and compared to the other site incision sites, my left-upper lip site wasn't looking all that well. I decided to probe the area a bit with a set of tweezers, and ended up finding that one of the hairs from my beard had somehow gotten caught in the regenerating tissue and gotten firmly implanted in it. I managed to free it and pluck it out, which immediately made things look a lot better over there. That was about two days ago now, and I'm thankful to say that all the swelling and redness in that area is pretty much gone, so that one is looking good now too.

With regards to scars, it's hard to tell at this point. The one on my cheek won't have a scar at all, and right now it's only slightly red. If anything there might be a very slight discoloration similar to the mole, but it's hard to tell at this point. All in all, I think it'll be pretty much invisible when it's done, which is awesome considering that was the biggest one, and my main concern.

The one in the center of my upper-lip was really tiny, and it only required one stitch. I can't even really see an incision there at all to be honest, so I'm fairly certain you won't see that one either.

The one on my left-upper lip was the second largest one, and I basically only had it removed because I was already on the cutting table getting the other ones taken out. Given that it was in an area of high tension (it moved when I smiled), the stitches ended up biting into the skin slightly, and I had slight railroad track marks when they were removed. Now that I have that ingrown hair taken care of, and the swelling has gone down, I can hardly see any stitch marks. I can still see the original incision mark though, but that's only really because things are a bit pink in the area. In another few weeks, I'd be surprised if you can notice that one either.

All in all it's only been about three and a half weeks and I'm definitely really happy with my decision to get them out. Looking at all photos prior to the surgery, I'm really amazed I wasn't more conscious of the moles before. Now that they're gone, it seems totally normally that I have a moleless, smooth face now, albeit with a few slightly pink incision sites. So if you're thinking about doing something similar, I really wouldn't hesitate. It was a really easy procedure, and the results so far are better than I expected (I fully assumed I'd have small scars in all three areas, but at least in two, there's really nothing left to see).