Phew, thank goodness that’s all over. Yes, I had my skin cancer “excised” on Tuesday. Here it is – I’m showing only a reduced size photo as it’s a bit gruesome.

I was supposed to have a general anaesthetic, but the anaesthetist wasn’t sure of intubating me so they decided to do it under local anaesthetic. It was fine, I hardly felt a thing. Because they used Midazolam, my memory of it all is a bit hazy. I just remember a lot of pushing and wiping, and me being very chatty during it all. I probably talked excessively but they didn’t tell me to shut up.

I had assumed they’d take the graft skin from my backside, but without asking or telling me, they took it from my right front of shoulder. Pity, the scar will be pretty visible there I assume, but at my age, do I care? Not much.

There was no bleeding and they left the head wound uncovered, but it started bleeding the next night and got a bit messy. It looks a bit ugly now, but the bleeding’s stopped.

The other thing was that they walked me to the theatre and got me to swing up onto the table. First time that’s happened. They slid me back onto a bed at the end, though, and then I nattered away to a nurse in the recovery room for at least half an hour. I seem to be talking a lot more as I get older – becoming garrulous, like a few people I could name. Must watch that.

Surprisingly, there was virtually no pain. They’ve given me a prescription for strong pain relief but I haven’t needed anything yet, not even paracetamol.

He’ll remove the stitches in about a month, I believe. It’s a pity my GPs didn’t push harder for me to get this seen to a year ago, when it was much smaller. And that I didn’t speak up enough. And that it took three months from the time I first phoned the surgeon for an appointment to having the surgery. It grew during that time and started to hurt much more. They haven’t said anything about malignancy, but that’s what I’m worried about.

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Then I had another appointment at RPH in the city yesterday. It meant I had to get up at 6am to catch the train at 7.55am, then the CAT bus to Goderich St.

I planned my trip on the Transperth web site and saw at first that the Red Cat went straight past my destination. Then I saw a notice that it had been temporarily discontinued and to take the Yellow Cat. OK, I did that.

But that bus took me on a scenic tour of East Perth, down Wellington St, not along Goderich St. Gaaah! I had to ask the driver and he said OK, get off here, corner of Wellington and Lord St, and walk up to Goderich St.

Pheee-ew! It’s uphill and I was buggered when I reached the hospital. I was 15 mins late, but the doctor was also late, so it didn’t matter.

Then, when I left, what to do? Then I realised that the Red Cat bus does go past the door, so I caught it back to Perth station. So why did the web site tell me it wasn’t running? Grrrr.

The other point about my trip was that I’d completely forgotten about wearing a mask on public transport, so didn’t have mine with me. I covered my mouth with a thick restaurant napkin I had in my bag, but there was a ticket inspector and he noticed me. He said it’s OK, then 5 mins later came back and gave me a proper mask, free of charge. That was good of him.

I have to say, there was 100% mask compliance on the train and buses (apart from me, initially). I only saw one other woman with no mask, but it was only briefly before she got off. It shows how different we are to the USA and UK. We obey the rules, and that’s why we’re almost free of the virus compared to those disastrous, rule defying countries. Fools.

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Well, that’s the way to lose weight. After all that vigorous exercise yesterday, I dropped 1.5kg.