Another day, another scar

I'm currently recovering at home from a bit of minor surgery, having had a lipoma (fatty tumor) removed from my back yesterday. It's one of those things that because it's on my back I promptly used to forget about until I saw my friend Inecke, who would then scold me about not having had it checked out. This went on for a while, but it wasn't 'til I was in Thailand over Xmas and having daily massages that it kept being pushed to the front of my mind (or rather my chest cavity through over exuberant massage).

Amazingly in the papers, Singaporeans have been moaning about the state of their health service, having in some cases to wait for up to an hour at a walk in clinic to be seen. Now anyone who has been to A&E in the UK lately will know how laughable this is. It transpires that selfish doctors here actually spend time with their patients to find out what it wrong with them. In one case, peoples appointments were delayed by an hour due to a cardiac arrest and subsequent stabilisation. And people still complained.

Now I went through the private health service. Above several shopping malls are literally floors and floors of private clinics like a beehive of medical practise - everything from cardiology to plastic surgery. Imagine nipping into Paragon for some new Chanel, finding the last pencil skirt in the sale, and it being a little too small. No problem, just buy that skirt and nip upstairs for some lipo...

Joking aside, I had an appointment with a GP Monday morning, who referred me to a dermatologist in the same building and I got an appointment in the next 10 minutes, who then referred me to a surgeon. I could in theory have had the procedure the same day, except for a mistake on the name of my insurance group so I had to wait til 4pm the same day to be seen in another clinic. The most painful bit (well nearly) was dealing with the call centre who administer the scheme, who have thoughtfully limited being on hold to 10 minutes 'for your convinience' then cut you off. And it's actually 5 mins, cos I timed it. Into surgery on Wednesday (the clinic has a mini theatre attached). Seriously, even Bupa would struggle to compete. Oddly though, both my GP and surgery appointment were in clinics that were predominately plastic surgery, so I was lucky that I didn't come out with a 36DD cup as well. Who knows, maybe the lipoma gets turned into an all natural enhancement package?

It also transpires that I seem to have a bad reaction to local anaesthetic, which I'd experienced before when I had my last tattoo. At the time I'd put it down to having my lower spinal area perforated, but it seems that whatever is in the cream they use is also in the local they gave me. Anyway, it's like a rather nasty trip, not helped by waking up and seeing two totally unfamiliar Asian faces staring down at me in a room that I didn't recognise. And like last time, it happened twice before my body adjusted. Not nice. Understandably, they were reluctant to give me any more anaesthesia even when the procedure went into 'un-numbed' territory. They also used some 'frickin laser beams' on me and ouch they hurt (and people DON'T smell like pork when they're cooked which dispels a popular conception).

Anyway, hopefully alright now, lab tests pending etc.