Pilomatricoma--One Family's Story: It's baaacckkk...

Nine years later, we're back!

You remember this face, right? Well, she's all grown up and just turned 12 years old. In February, about nine years from when we first took her to the dermatologist for a "blackhead" under her right eye, I spied what looked like a blackhead on the left side of her nose. It took several hours for it to dawn on me that this could be another pilomatricoma :( It's larger than a normal blackhead and looks dark under the skin as well. Back to Dr. Kasten at University of Michigan pediatric plastic surgery, the doctor who operated on her face so well in 2010.

A May 2019 visit to Dr. Kasten had mixed results. He believed this COULD be just a clogged pore this time (mom's gut says no, but he IS the doctor...) He tried to manually express it (AKA he squeezed it) and honestly, it looks way worse now. I'm having flashbacks to exactly 9 years ago when the spot that seemed like nothing swelled up to something horrid. It's been 10 days since the visit to Dr. Kasten and you can see the progression from before and after:

New Pilomatricoma in a new spot?

One week after seeing Dr. Kasten

10 days after seeing Dr. Kasten

Needless to say, we are not thrilled with the progression of this spot after our visit. We have a surgery date set for July 29 (after school is out and camps are through), and are waiting out the inflammation and hoping it doesn't turn infected. And perhaps, Dr. Kasten will have been right and this will just go away (again, Mom's gut says no).

July 22, 2019--
We made it to surgery date and sure enough, it's still there (Mom is always right! :) The surgery at U-M Mott Children's Hospital with Dr. Kasten was a breeze, she was under sedation but not with a breathing tube so recovery was pretty quick. He said she would be his first patient to ever have TWO pilomatricomas in a lifetime! Lucky us :(

Here she is before surgery, and at the hospital with the IV, then the "after" with three small stitches.