What Lump?

For the past 20 years this has been an ongoing exchange between me and my dad:
My dad: "You know, Tracie, with today's advances in medical technology we can definitely take care of that lump."
Me: "What lump?"
If this funny little conversation sounds familiar then you might just have seen the hilarious Mel Brooks movie Young Frankenstein. In one scene Gene Wilder, who plays Dr. Frankenstein, pats Igor on the shoulder, noticing that Igor has a substantial hump on his back. Dr. Frankenstein proceeds to say the whole thing about how medical advances could remove his hump and of course that's when Igor, with all seriousness, answers, "What hump?" It then becomes a joke throughout the movie especially when the hump moves to Igor's other shoulder. Anyway, my dad has always found this so funny with me because although I do not have a hump on my back I DO have a lump. This lump, or really cyst, showed up sometime in my high school years and has been there ever since. I don't really think about it but David has never found it too appealing and my mom even drew a face on it last summer. Over the past few years I've noticed that it's been growing larger so I finally decided to go ahead and get it removed.

It turns out that modern medicine does make it a pretty easy procedure but it's still a surgery that required donning the lovely little hospital robe, getting painful though extremely fast action numbing injections in my back, and enduring the smell of burning human flesh and insides as the cut was cauterized. I asked to see the cyst once it was removed and was thoroughly disgusted by what had been in my back all these years.

The first few days I was in a bit of pain but had wonderful painkillers on hand. Unfortunately it turned out that I was allergic to them but that's okay because I really started feeling better quickly. Unfortunately the stitches don't come out until next week - 12 days after surgery! But I am now lump free and my dad is going to have to find something else to tease me about for the next 20 years.