WHAT?!? Are You Saying My Head is FAT?!?

I finally found out yesterday what the heck was inside my head.

But, before we get there, a little back story. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you need to watch the video here and then check out my Elephant Man look here.

Done? All caught up? Great.

So, I rolled into Dr. Smart-Ass's office with my mother and all three kids in tow. Ty-man was at work and Mom didn't want me going alone. She was afraid I would receive a bad diagnosis. Since she was to be my babysitter, all five of us loaded up and headed off to the doctor's office.

Allow me to say that my swelling has gone down (almost - just a smidge left) and I'm not so much of a freak show (physically). Dr. Smart-Ass was very pleased with how everything looked and felt. As he began cutting out the stitches, I mentioned that this was my first set of stitches ever and my first time having said stitches cut out of me. He replied that it was his first time, too.

(God, I'm really starting to love that man. I think I'd sign up for Botox just to hang out with him!)

Now, the news. What he pulled out of my head was a cavernous hemangioma.

(I can hear all of you now. A cave whosiwhats? Did he just say she's a fat-head? An airhead? WHA?)

Cavernous hemangioma. You can read some more on them here and here. Essentially what I had was a tangled knot of blood vessels. Did I have the red birthmark? No. Was it spongy? No. Actually, it was kind of hard. Dr. Smart-Ass said that it was larger than he thought and actually up underneath my muscle structure. What I think is that I've had this for most of my life and it finally, in the last few months, popped out from under the muscle, right below my temple, and I felt it. Had it grown larger I may have seen the reddish hue on my skin, it could have deformed my face, and surgery to remove it would have been more complicated as it would have bled. Profusely.

Lucky, kids. I'm damned lucky and thankful that what he took out wasn't anything worse.

The best part is that my right eyebrow is now misbehaving. The nerve that controls my eyebrow runs right in front of where the hemangioma was removed. That poor nerve had its butt kicked and because of that my right eyebrow won't go up as far as it should.

Turns out the freak show isn't too far gone after all. Oh, well. Maybe I can work that whole Spock thing at DragonCon more easily this year.