Over the last decade, I’ve had a couple of skin cancers on my face, and quite a few actinic keratoses – it’s kept my dermatologist busy. The last time I saw her, she had to remove another couple of actinic keratoses and suggested I consider photodynamic therapy to reduce the chance of recurrence; today was the day for the treatment.
The experience started with a facial acetone scrub, then the application of the photosensitized, and then a 90-minute wait for it to sink in. That part was pretty boring – I’d brought my computer, so I caught up on my email a bit.
And then came the real treatment – 16 minutes, 45 seconds with a very bright light bathing my face. They gave me goggles and told me to keep my eyes shut, which I was happy to do. They also gave me a little fan in case I got warm – I was glad I had it, because my face was on fire! I didn’t think to start a podcast playing before I had to close my eyes, so I had nothing to distract me; the best I could do was to tell my watch to time three-minute intervals so I’d have some idea of how long I had left.
I was relieved when the light went out; they had me wash my face with a very gentle wash and put on sunscreen. They told me to avoid bright light for the next few days because my skin will be very light-sensitive – we took a walk near sunset this afternoon and even then, I could feel the effect when the light hit my face.
On a more cheerful note, unplugging the cable modem and giving it a short rest seems to have helped my connectivity; it’s been nearly a full day and all of the channels are still “locked”, though I am seeing some packet loss, so I still see a call to Comcast in my future.
I’ve had that done! But I had a problem about the goggles. I think the tiny nose piece covered up an area I was concerned about and I went through all that—red-faced, avoiding sunlight, etc. and i still had a bit, well actually my whole nose that I had to do a cream treatment on over a couple of weeks. But I couldn’t complain because Rob needed the cream treatment over his whole face! And when the cream started working his face looked a real pizza-face mess. Luckily that stuff all fell off and he looked pretty good then!