My Mohs surgery was not a traumatic experience - a better case scenario

First of all, I completely sympathize for those of you on this site who have had these shocking experiences and thank you for taking time to share your experience. I also feel it fair to share more of the less severe side of BCC and Mohs surgery for those who have just been diagnosed and are looking for some info. Though my chances going in to Mohs surgery were good that it would be a minor procedure, no one truly knew going in there if I were going to end up with a deeper, larger hole. And that was 99% of what I had seen on the internet - the severe cases. It makes sense that those with easy experiences just move on and forget about it, but remembering how nervous I was I wanted to take time to tell my story.

I am a 33 year-old female of Italian and Czech descent. I grew up going to the beach but not baking, not sleeping in tanning beds, though I have had a few burns. Upon getting a regular check-up (I go to the dermatologist for a couple of benign things and to check my moles once a year bc I have a little more than average), I pointed out this new growth on the side of my nose which he thought was just a white mole or something I can't remember. He also mentioned it could be BCC. He cut it off and surprisingly it came back with BCC cells.

They called and scheduled me for Mohs about a month later. They didn't suggest any other options. Having a friend who is also a well-respected and renowned skin cancer surgeon up in NY, I was familiar with it already. When I asked her she suggested I don't mess around with any other therapies bc of its great success and lack of scars, etc. But I still was worried about the results since you don't know how deep it is until you get in, supposedly. I wanted to know the worst case scenario, just in case, but also the best.

As I searched for more details I kept encountering all these horror stories. How unfair that people weren't told in advance that it could be a big hole - and though it's not the majority of the cases, it is of course what I prepared for.

Upon my surgery day I spoke both to the nurse and my MD about it - my dermatologist peformed the Mohs and he told me he figured we got most of it with the mole originally - that the key is to go the the MD as soon as you notice something, and that it should only be one or maybe two passes. I appreciated his candor and wish I had the chance to speak with him a few weeks earlier! :)

I did not have to wait in a waiting room with other people. After the nurse numbed me, the MD came in with the lab tech, and after about 10 seconds he was done with the first scrape. I felt nothing, hardly a pressure. I remained alone in the surgery room in my surgical shoes, cap and robe and read a book until they returned twenty minutes later. He told me there was only a teeny bit at the center, and though it could just be the "tip of the iceberg" he really thought it was the last of it.

So he went in the second time - I didn't get numbed again - and after scraping it said to all of us, "oh yeah, that's all gone." In ten minutes they returned to tell me they had all of it.