My emergency laser surgery

So I have to tell you about my emergency laser surgery that I had to have last month. It wasn't really an emergency and I guess I shouldn't really classify it as a surgery either. It was more like a procedure but there was definitely a LASER involved. I had gone in for my regular teeth cleaning at the dentist. During my examination the hygenist was checking out my tongue and called the dentist in to see something. Apparently under one side of my tongue I had grown an abnormally large flappy thingy. At least that's how they described it to me. It was way at the back down where my tongue connects to...well, where ever your tongue connect to. Is that classified as your throat? Anyway, it was way in the back there under my tongue. So the dentist thought it was a good idea that I visit an oral surgeon. I don't think it's ever good when your at one doctor's office and they send you to another one. It just doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings inside. So the desk lady called and got me an appointment at the oral surgeon's office that same day. So I get to the office about 2:15pm. I immediately got put in a cold, sterile, white room by myself. You know the kind where you can't help but say "hello?" just to see if there's an echo. The nurse had asked if I wanted a magazine but I had declined. Stupid! If a nurse asks you if you want a magazine it's usually a good indication that you're going to be there a while. I got to sit there alone with only my thoughts for about forty minutes. I swear I almost feel asleep about 5 times but the sound of my shoes rubbing against the plastic lining kept waking me up.

The doctor finally came in, greeted me, then asked me to stick out my tongue. As I did he grabbed my tongue and pulled it out a little further than is physically possible and then pulled it to my left cheek (the one on my face.) It looked like this...But it felt like this...

He looked in my mouth for a while and then said, "Yep, you appear to have an enlarged lingual tonsil back there." He then checked the other side to see the difference. He said that it was abnormally large (something I don't enjoy hearing about myself) and that it was probably nothing but that it would be a good idea to remove it and make sure. So I agreed, signed my life away and they wheeled in the mobile laser center. Soon my big sterile room was filled with a bunch of equipment. They just wheeled all this stuff in and I didn't even have to move! My favorite part was the nurse testing out the laser right in front of me. She put a tongue depressor in front of the laser beam and moved it around to make sure everything was operational. For a second I thought maybe she was going to write my name in the wood and give it to me as a keepsake. They fitted me with some sweet shades and the doctor came in and gave me a numbing shot which hurt really bad. Then once that had taken effect he began the "laser procedure." The nurse's job during this was two fold - 1) grabbed my tongue and pulled it out and to the side again and 2) use that suction tool to suck up the smoke from my burning flesh. Boy is that a pleasant smell! It was a pretty quick operation. The doctor just zapped the back of my mouth with the laser beam and pulled the flappy thing out. To his credit he didn't have much room to work with and he managed to not remove my whole tongue so it was pretty successful. He showed me the said "flap" and it was kinda big - about the size of a molar. So they put the "specimen" (ew, yuck I hate that word) in a jar and said they would send it out for a "bobopsy." I was hoping that they did not find teeth and a spinal cord in my flap. Perhaps, inside the flap, was my twin. Hopefully not though.

So I returned a week later armed with a magazine this time to wait for my biopsy results. I was in the room for about 2.4 seconds before the doctor came in and told me the results. It had come back as (and I quote) a "Right postero-lateral tongue-squamous epithelial-lined lymphoid" which apparently was non-life threatening. Just abnormally large. I think I might go back and have them take a look at my thighs and see what the laser can do with those.