War(t) is Hell....

I'm not that vain or anything, but after several months, I finally got tired of the small, semi-dangling wart sticking out from my neck like teeny weeny spike from God knows where. I often get this urge to just pull it out with my bare fingers, but no, you can't do that to a wart.

What is a wart anyway? According to familydoctor.org, warts are a type of infection caused by viruses in the human papillomavirus (HPV) family. There are at least 60 types of HPV viruses.

After consulting with my friends, I finally made the decision to get the wart removed. Before I had time to second guess myself, I was in front of Let's Face It at the third floor of the SM City, North Edsa. The place was recommended to me by a couple at work who got to try out their services first hand.

I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but as I was already there, I just held my breath and entered the premises. After some consultation, my agreed upon treatment was a facial, then wart removal. Only one wart was actually bothersome, but I figured, since I was already there, might as well get rid of the rest. Not that I had that many, and most were small. While I waited for my turn, my eyes scanned the inside of the clinic. It was somewhat eerie, with dozens of clients lying on...stretchers? It sort of reminded me of a hospital emergency room. (I later learned that they are actually called "facial beds.")

The vast majority of clients were women, which made me a bit uncomfortable. Do guys go to these kind of clinics? Actually I saw about two or three guys in the entire room, excluding myself. Female patrons were more than twenty. The lights were dim, and instrumental piano music was piped in, probably to relax the clients. There were a lot of good looking women, and I had to fight the urge to approach one and ask: "So, you come here often?" :-) Had I fully understood what I was in for, I wouldn't have been so flippant.

The facial was nothing out of the ordinary, they cleaned, vacuumed, picked on and masked my face. During masking, they draped a cloth over my face. Hmmm...so this is how it feels to be a corpse, when they lay a sheet over your head. After the facial, they wiped my face clean and proceeded to apply topical anaesthetic to the warts on my face and neck. Then they started taping my face with...what was that? Scotch tape? After 30 minutes, when the anaesthetic already kicked in...we get to the good part...cauterization.

Cauterization involves the use of a red hot medical soldering iron to physically destroy the wart itself and to burn over the base of the wart. The skin where the wart used to be ends up looking like a bad scratch. There's always a risk with cauterization of scarring occurring, particularly if an infection takes place, so you have to be careful.

Annie, my officemate, said that it shouldn't hurt. She lied. :-) Well to be honest, the pain wasn't that bad, and except for the occassional jerk when the needle gets too hot, that pain was actually quite tolerable. Of course, there's something quite disconcerting about hearing the sizzle and taking in the scent of burning flesh...:-)

I was told to avoid getting my face wet for the next two days, and to apply healing cream over the scabbed areas twice a day for a week.

All in all, I look as if a cat jumped on my face. But the scabbed wounds are quite small, and would probably heal up in a few days.

I wonder if anyone would notice? Somehow, I doubt it.

Like they say, war(t) is hell. :-)