ASSIGNMENTS:
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Jenni
New York, New York USA
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REPORTS:
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I have freckles all over my body and my mother, a general practitioner, thought that some of them were changing too quickly for her liking. There were two on my back that she was particularly worried about. I was visiting my hometown in New Zealand and she suggested that she take them out for me while I was there, so one afternoon I caught the ferry over to her surgery and lay face down on her examining bed and she injected local anesthetic in around each freckle. About twenty years ago, when I was eight years old, I had begged to be allowed to watch my mother do some surgery, and a patient had agreed that I could watch her freckles being cut out. I was immediately nauseated by the sudden welling of blood as the scalpel cut her skin and so I had to leave the room. So I was glad the cuts would be made on my back, where I couldn't see. All I could feel was a series of variations on tugging, as she cut then pulled them out and stitched me up. Once she finished these, my mum then suggested that she cut out a big mole on my left arm, just above the inside of the elbow. It was a nasty looking bumpy thing that occasionally sprouted a hair or two, but I didn't want her to cut it because I knew I'd have to watch. The anesthetic she injected didn't work and it really began to hurt as she picked away at it with the scalpel. What with me complaining through my gritted teeth and the size of the mole, it came out pretty ragged and she didn't have a great time stitching it up. So while the other two healed nicely, this one never did. The stitches did nothing to close the hole.
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