So, I’d had this little lump that looked like a swollen blackhead on my eyelid for months. It’s mostly flesh-coloured, so it didn’t bother me too much.

Then I woke up one morning and the lump had gotten a bit bigger and my whole eyelid was slightly red and swollen. I rushed to a specialist immediately.

A dermatologist, my doctor said it was some clogged oil. He said he’d lance it and drain it.

It stung, the lancing. But nothing flowed out except blood. Whatever’s inside had apparently hardened since it’d been growing for months.

The doctor said, “I’ll have to cauterise it off. Please wait outside for 15 minutes while we prep the surgery room.”

WHAT… SURGERY?

LIKE, NOW?!?!!?

I went ahead with it, anyway. “Now” was as good a time as any, I supposed, plus I couldn’t have a stupid lump sit on my eyelid forever.

I was sent outside to the clinic’s waiting room with a hand holding up a piece of gauze pressed again the bleeding lump.

While waiting in that ridiculous position, I decided to take my mind off the discomfort by reading.

Except I was reading a historical novel set during the 16th Century Inquisition in England.

As fate would have it, at that precise moment, I reached a part in the book where someone just got arrested for heresy and was describing what she saw in prison, victims being tortured during interrogation and all. I shall not repeat the detailed descriptions here for the sake of your stomach.

For it made my stomach turn and my hackles rise.

I tried to console myself with the fact that I was going to face a caring doctor and not the Inquisition.

Some consolation.

When the doctor called me again, too soon, I went into the small surgery room and lay down, heart pumping nervously, partly from what I had just read and partly from the fear of surgery, even a lousy minor surgery. I can stand pain but I’m terribly squeamish about it when it’s accompanied by blood and gore.

Then, the doctor said he was going to inject my eyelid with anaesthesia and I breathed a sigh of relief. Yay for anasthesia, although that needle was painful. More painful than the initial lancing.

So, I was supposed to not feel any pain after that but when I saw the doctor hold out the black cauterising rod, my heart pumped even more nervously.

Squeamish!

I squeezeed my eye shut.

Then he lowered it to my eyelid and I heard, “Zzzzt!”

I also felt a sting. A very thin, sharp prick, like a very thin needle piercing in, deep under my eyelid where the anaesthesia couldn’t reach. It wasn’t all that painful, just like how you’d feel being stung by a mosquito.

But it was still horrifying because I kept imagining the anaesthesia suddenly wearing off or not working.

And then I smelled burning flesh. Or something.

The doctor zapped my lids about five or six times more. Each time, it stung, but the pain was negligible. It was just the thought of what’s happening that made me feel queasy.

Plus the smell of burning.

I tried not to think about how they burnt heretics at the stake.

Two or three minutes later, it was done and the doctor showed me the little seed that was hidden inside the lump. Tiny brown thing that caused me all that trauma.

I was sent home with some medication and a dark red wound where the lump used to be.

Yay. No more lump!

But ugly scab for a week or more. T_T

By the way, this isn’t the same thing that I went to see a doctor about last week. Yes, I had two different problems on BOTH EYES within a week! How annoying!

The other one also involves some kind of clog and it’s right on the edge of the lid where the eyelashes are. The lump hasn’t totally disappeared yet.

Woe.