Alien Removal

This has been an eventful week for us. We started the week off with a mini surgery! Charlotte had an alien removed from her ear, hence the title of this post.

Okay it wasn’t a real alien but it was a foreign body. Back in October, we noticed a bump in her ear and wondered what it was. We decided to just keep an eye on it for a while because she said it didn’t hurt or bother her at all. As we watched it over the next couple months, we noticed that it continued to grow. Finally we got an appointment with our pediatrician to see what was going on. He told us it was probably just a cyst but referred us to an ENT doctor for a second opinion in case it was something else. The ENT agreed that it was most likely a cyst and we decided to have it removed with a minor in office surgery.

On Tuesday, I took Charlotte in to have the bump removed. After numbing her ear, the procedure was painless. I actually got to watch the whole thing and I thought it was fascinating!  The doctor cut around the bump, pulled back the flap of skin and the cut around the cyst ball thing and cut it out. The doctor called it a dermoid cyst. A dermoid cyst is a growth of normal tissue enclosed in a pocket of cells called a sac. This tissue grows in or under your skin in an unexpected location.

The cyst was literally the size and shape of a pea. The doctor took it out and then stitched her ear skin flap back down. Charlotte was pretty loopy until the Versed wore off but she was awake the whole time. Her ear should heal just fine and not have any major scarring. The doctor said he got all of it out so the cyst shouldn’t grow back. Yeah no more alien!  

Along with this surgery, we also celebrated Valentine’s Day, planned a fun Valentine’s party for Charlotte’s class, made sugar cookies for the neighbors, and had our first major snow storm of the winter. I know winter is almost over but, yes, it was our first snowstorm complete with a snow delay for school. It is supposed to snow the rest of this week too so maybe the kids will get to play in the snow a couple times this year. I prefer to stay inside when it is snowing but maybe I’ll get my snowshoes out for once. We’ll see.