Not to compare myself to Angelina Jolie but I have also chosen to have elective surgury. Yesterday I said goodbye to an old friend I have carried around for almost fifteen years. A benign fatty tumor also known as a lipoma has lived on my upper back since I first met my wife. Her memory is that it was about the size of a quarter in the spring of 1999.
I decided to get mine removed for purely aesthetic reasons—as someone who is teaching people how to move it is hard to show off my excellent posture when there is a large lump at the base of my neck. The plastic surgeon that is removing it was shocked/appalled that I would let it go and grow for so long. My sheepish reply was that I barely noticed it. It doesn’t hurt or bother me in any way though shirts don’t fit perfectly.
The overwhelming percentage of lipomas are benign and the jury is out on whether or not there is a danger of them becoming a cancerous tumor known as liposarcoma. I thought that my lipoma would be removed via liposuction but it was actually excised and sent to a lab for testing. My father had many of them in the same area that I have the one—removed only to grow back— but they were never cancerous so I’m not too worried about mine. The procedure was simple—out patient, ninety minutes, drove myself home. And now I am the same only different. And my clothes will fit better.
Life is about being adaptable. I dont like medicines yet I took antibiotics following recent dental work. I am not a fan of surgeries and yet here I am having my fourth one (three knee surguries) in fifty short years. I want to live a long healty and active life and i am happy to get there anyway that I can.