The fall weather is here to stay. It’s been chilly enough for me to turn on the electric radiators in the apartment for the first time since spring, and I’ve had to reset their clocks and daytime / nighttime programmes again. Meanwhile, my Eddie Bauer flannel shirts and warmer outerwear are back in my wardrobe rotation.
On Monday afternoon, I had an appointment with a dermatologist — the same one I saw in July for my nasty bug bites / hives — to take a look at a few spots on my skin. I had been going to a dermatologist for annual body scans in San Francisco for several years, and right before moving to Ireland had gone for one last visit to freeze off a couple of “pre-cancer” scaly spots on my scalp. Another one had popped up on my forehead along my hairline, as well as one on the top of my left ear, over the past few months. The dermatology clinic I found in Dublin seems more geared for cosmetic procedures, but I had a good experience with the Bulgarian “Dr. Maria” previously, and most importantly, they didn’t have a several months-long waiting list. The clinic is a block away from Merrion Square, about a 15-20 minute walk from Sprangers Yard, so relatively convenient. Since I was a returning patient, the check-in process was quick, and I only waited for a few minutes before the doctor emerged to lead me into her office. I pointed out the spots I wanted checked, and she examined them using a lens fitted to a smartphone so that she could also take photos. I figured she would just freeze them off like my dermatologist in the U.S. had done in the past. However, she explained that the freezing treatment might not get all the pre-cancer “actinic keratosis” cells. Instead, in her opinion the best treatment was a prescription cream that I would need to apply to the spots for 4 weeks, twice daily, after which she would want to see me again to make sure the spots were completely gone and there was no sign of actual cancer. This gave me pause for two reasons. One — I was expecting the quick-fix approach of freezing the spots off, not four weeks of having to apply a cream. And two — she used the word “chemotherapy” (!) when referring to the prescription cream. That caught me off guard, and I had to ask her to repeat herself to make sure I heard it correctly. She patiently repeated the name of prescription cream, Efudix (Fluorouracil), and a convincing explanation of why it would be a more effective treatment. OK, I said, if that’s what she recommends then I’ll go along with it.
There was also a spot on my left arm I asked her to take a look at, which was in the same area as one of the nasty bug bites / hives I had in July. After examining it, she said it looked different than other places where the bug bites had been and recommended that it be cut out and sent off for a biopsy. Again, this was also not expected and gave me pause. Out of an abundance of caution, I agreed on having it done. The doctor produced a consent form and a few pages of information about how to treat the incision area, which she also went over with me a couple of times. She instructed me to lay down on the examination table in the room, then she disinfected the area around the spot, administered a local anesthetic, removed a small chunk of flesh from my arm, and stitched up the wound. During the procedure we chatted casually about the weather, her 5 year old daughter who was learning English, and cultural differences between Bulgaria and Ireland. It didn’t take long and I barely felt a thing. She told me to avoid getting the area wet for 24 hours (so no showering), then remove the bandage, clean the wound with alcohol pads, apply some antibiotic cream (leftover from my July bug bites / hives), and keep the wound covered with a waterproof bandaid (called “plasters” here in Ireland) while it heals. I am to return in two weeks to have the stitches removed. In all, the “consultation” visit cost €160, of which I hope to recover 75% from my private health insurance. The prescription chemotherapy cream cost €36. I need to double-check my private insurance on the prescription coverage, although there’s also a public “drug payment card” in Ireland that I need to apply for… the last time I checked, the online application form was unavailable on the Health Service Executive’s website due to the ransomeware attack earlier in the year.
After filling the prescription on Grafton Street at a Boots Pharmacy (a large UK pharmacy chain with multiple locations in Dublin), I returned home to finish up a few more emails for work. As is my habit, I turned on RTÉ Radio 1 via online streaming over one of my wifi-enabled smart speakers to listen to the evening news. The connection was intermittent, so I tried switching to my phone’s network connection, but that too didn’t seem to be stable. I managed to read a news headline online about widespread network issues related to outages across all Facebook products before my phone’s network stopped working. Both my home internet service and phone service are with Vodafone, and in the moment I realised that it might not be such a good idea to rely on the same provider for both. Everyone in Ireland, and throughout Europe for that matter, uses WhatsApp for texting — and since WhatsApp is a Facebook product, it was down, too. I tried sending a regular text to my friend CJ then ended up just calling him (thankfully conventional phone calls were still going through). He uses a different internet provider that was still working fine, and he confirmed that there were widespread outages being reported. After about 30-45 minutes, my internet connection came back online, but for awhile there I started to wonder what would happen if the outage would have lasted much longer… I would basically be cut off from the news, work, everything. Perhaps I should get an old-fashioned radio for emergencies like this?
Until next time….
