gone missing

Winston lost his eyebrow yesterday. I'll let that sink in.


This is not some crazy new-fangled way of saying he lost his mojo or juju or anything not related to his face. No, really, Winston lost his eyebrow yesterday. It was actually taken from him – removed completely. Why, you ask? Why would anyone remove Winston’s eyebrow?

This was yet another punch dealt to me by Monday, my emerging nemesis. It was a late-dealt blow, too. I thought Monday had finally decided to cool off a bit, lay low and let the Whimsy recover from unadulterated hatefulness. I was packing my things, ready to leave Workplace when my cell rang. Mom was calling. I picked up – she was fairly normal, asking where I was, why I was still at Workplace (this is a typical, loving conversation between mother & daughter). Then she launched into this, “Well, your father and I are just getting home from the hospital.”
Me: “Really? What’s going on?”
Mom: “You remember when you were here, and Dad had that little dot on his forehead?”
Me: “Yes, vividly.” (Dad had me looking at the “dot” with a magnifying glass, trying to convince me that it was a stitch that was just magically emerging from his forehead after he had some skin cancer removed in March. After a time, and consults with other family members, Winston agreed to go to the doctor. The man is a BRICK. I think if he had an actual boulder emerging from his head, he’d still be all, “Oh – it’s nothing! Just a bit of gravel from that time when I fell down the mountainside! Pip pip!”)
Mom: “The doctor wanted to remove it – thinking that it might be a bit more of the same skin cancer. We thought the appointment would just be an hour. It took 6. There were all these… fingers of cancer that went deeper, and farther…” she trails off.
Me: “What?! Is dad okay?!”
Mom: “He’s really tired. And his face, really looks like hamburger. They had to cut everywhere. It’s really terrible.”
Me: “Is he going to be OKAY?”
Mom: “Your father doesn’t have an eyebrow anymore! They took his eyebrow!”

Today Winston is undergoing reconstructive surgery skin grafts of his neck to cover most of the affected areas on his face, but apparently, the eyebrow is gone. It isn’t growing back. They had to remove too much of the actual eyebrow tissue. Did you know you have eyebrow tissue? You do, and so do I. But not Winston. He now will walk the planet in a state of either perpetual astonishment or perpetual scorn. I figure that’s how he’ll look, once everything else heals. Kinda like someone who has either raised one eyebrow so high into the hairline (for the surprise) or squished one eyebrow so far down over his eye (for the scorn), you can’t see it. Chip and I tried to do different impressions last night, in our best attempts to picture Winston’s new look.

You can imagine that I’m putting a light-hearted spin on something that is not altogether pleasant. I just hope and pray that Winston is going to be okay – that they got all that nastiness out. We’re told that the next step, at this point, is a nasty cream therapy that he’ll use for a few weeks. This cream will not be kind to his poor beleaguered skin, but if it will ensure that the cancer is gone – bring it on. I do believe we will throw in the other eyebrow, if that will help.