Third time is the charm?

I've been enjoying minor surgery for the last couple of months. It started out with a lump on my upper arm that was bothering me. I would bump into something and the lump would hurt. So I got in touch with a surgeon, got inspected and detected, then got the surgery in a nice out-patient surgery building. It went well, though I thought the number of nurses and the sophistication of the operating room were overkill. We got through the "hospital incidentals" scam relatively unscathed (the hospital billed more than $1500 for what amounted to a pair of socks, a robe, a blanket, and the use of a locker for a couple of hours). Incidentals, my ass! They just make this shit up...

Anyway, the pathologist said this was an atypical spindle cell tumor, but not malignant. Unfortunately he also said that some remained around the edge of the sample. So the surgeon politely asked me if he could remove the edges of the scar. Round 2 was in the doctor's office. By now I felt like I was getting to know the guy. He is a really nice guy, BTW. So out came the scar, looking like a little worm attached to a thread. This time the pathologist said that the edges were OK, but the bottom (where the sample faded into the fat tissue) still had some strange spindle cells. He/they (it had been to 4 labs by then) said this was a myxoid, spindle cell tumor that was not malignant, and would not metastasize. But the 4 of them (pathologists) together had some kind of anxiety, in that they could not classify it properly.

I spent some time reviewing this kind of tumor, and the result was confusion. Apparently there is a bunch of nomenclature, but not much standardization. It was like talking to a financial advisor, all jargon and smoke screens.

Soooo, the surgeon asked me again to allow him to get the rest, this time in the hospital. He wanted better lighting, better access to sutures, and a better nursing staff. Today I went in to have the surgery. Since he had to go all the way to the muscle, he loaded me up with lidocaine. Then he asked me if I felt anything. It was pretty much negative, though I could feel tugging. Since he was into the fat tissue, he started experiencing a bit of bleeding (wait, it was ME bleeding, I experienced the bleeding!) He used the electrocautery knife to sear off the blood vessels. Anyway, part way through he asked me if I felt anything, then it felt like he ran a hair brush over my raw meat! That was not pleasant, but I told him and he lidocained me again. A bit later, as he was finishing things, he asked me again. At that point, a sizzling noise preceded another hairbrush episode that just about brought me off the table. I yelled and scared the nurses. The doc apologized, and finished up without any more pain. By now, I told him, we were almost golfing buddies. To which he replied that he did, in fact, leave a divot in my arm. He had to go deep enough to eradicate the last of this benign tumor.

Hopefully this will be the last of it. Anything more and I'll be pissed. No wonder medicine costs so much. Next time I'll ask for an apple corer rather than surgery.