There are countless stories out there about people confronting a life-changing crisis. Perahps they or a family member has cancer. Or someone dies suddenly and the survivor is faced with rebuilding a life that had it's heart suddenly cut out, of life cut short, in it's prime, with so much promise.
This isn't one of them.
This is the story of a wart. If I helps you sympathise, it was a rather big wart. And on the back of my dominant hand, my right.
This was a wart that didn't want to die. It showed up, unannouced on the back of my hand one day. It was still small, but unmistakenly a wart. "Look.", I told my wife, "A wart." I hadn't had a wart since I was a young boy, when I had a series of them on my knees. I didn't know where it came from, the area that I was in at the time was relatively toad-free.
My wife, the practical one, wanted me to get rid of it right away. "It'll spread", she said. I looked at the wart. It hardly seemed to be the dynamo that she claimed. It was small, kinda scraggly. I tried to image it having children, spreading across the back of my hand like some kind of Viral Manifest Destiny. I decided to live and let, uh, whatever we classify virii as these days.
It grew. And grew. I could see people look at it in meetings. Children would ask me about it. The 'A toad peed on me' story grew old quickly. So, the time came when I decided to ask it to leave, in a nice, "Gee whiz, it's been swell having you here and all..." sort of way. I opted for these wart remover pads ("Painless! Odorless!") from the drugstore. It had a nice oval cover-up, which, for some reason, prompted more questions than ever. "What'd you do to yourself?", they'd say, pointing at the oval. "Wart", I'd say, killing the conversation. The wart turned white, shrank and peeled away. E-Z, right?
Not so fast. I quit using the stuff and within a week it was back. And pissed. It doubled in size and took on a real harsh appearance. I knew that I couldn't walk around with this gigantic wart on the back of my hand now. I went back to the drugstore and bought the 'Extra-strength' stuff - a yellow liquid in a bottle. It stunk, was rather painful and sizzled a little on my skin. Night after night I applied it. It turned white and peeled off again. I continued to apply it even though I was sure that I was pouring it directly on non-warty skin now. After a week or so with no real sign of a wart (though it was hard to tell, the spot where the wart had been now looked like Stalingrad circa 1945.), I quit. I waited pensively for results (or the lack thereof).
It came back. It was the Night of the Living Warts, rising from the grave again and again after you hit it with a two-by-four. I was tired of this. Time to haul out the big guns.
The doctor hardly glanced at it as he reached for the spray canister of Liquid Nitrogen. He doused it. It hurt. Very badly.
He says that it may take several treatments for it to really come off, though sometimes they slough in one. (I'm not optimistic - I've already scheduled another in a couple of weeks.)
And now, what you've all been waiting for, a picture of it, post-freeze. He said that it will probably look like a blood blister and it does, but in this photo it just looks gray. It has to be a swollen half-inch off of my hand.
And since no one really cares, I'll be sure to update this page with further pictures as the final push goes onward, towards a wart-free future.
