After undergoing facial surgery for skin cancer on Wednesday, I texted a selfie of my swollen, stitched-up face to my racquetball buddies.

“I want to know what the other guy looks like,” said Steverino. “Me, too,” said Roger Dodger.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “He was wearing a mask. He had a knife.”

Family members were stunned and repulsed by my appearance but tried to show sympathy.

The 747, our youngest grandson, gazed in wonder at the dried blood, the stitches angling across my cheek like a dueling scar, and the bulging purple bag under my eye. He said, “Grandpa, it’s lucky you’re not 20 in your prime and have to try to get a girlfriend.”

It looked worse next morning, the day after surgery. I told my wife I thought I should go in to see my surgeon Dr. D’Blessed. The bag of bloody serum under my right eye had swollen up like a balloon.

“He said to expect swelling under your eye,” Honey said.

“The instructions say to notify the doctor if the area is red, swollen and painful, and it is. Especially swollen. It looks like I’m growing an external liver. I think that’s excessive swelling.”

I called the office and told the nurse I wanted to see the doctor because I had excessive swelling under my eye.

“What do you call excessive?” she asked, the old trick of challenging me to define my terms.

“What do I know? I’ve never had the bag under my eye hyper-inflate with blood before. It just seems, I don’t know, excessive.”

She said they were booked solid with patients all morning but come anyway and they would work me in.

The staff probably passed word I was a troublesome patient, because in no time at all I was called in to an exam room. Dr. D’Blessed looked lovingly at his fine stitching, and ran an index finger gently over my bulging eye bag.

“Looks good,” he said.

“What? Good? Not excessive? How swollen does it have to be to be excessive?”

“I told you there would be some swelling under your eye.”

“He did tell you,” my wife said, taking his side.

“Can’t you lance it or something?”

“It will be fine,” the doctor said. “The swelling will be gone in a couple of days. How did you like my stitching?”

I complimented him on his fine stitch work. If he ever takes up quilting, he’ll win blue ribbons at the county fair.

My wife said the suture line follows natural grooves in my face, more or less, and any scarring will only improve my looks. The doctor said to come back in a week and he’ll take the stitches out. Kind of a shame. I was hoping to keep them ’til Halloween.

On the way home we stopped at Davis, Davis, Davis and Davis Pharmacy to pick up a prescribed antibiotic.

“Bar fight,” I told Davis, pointing to my face. “I had to go back in this morning to see the doc who stitched me up yesterday. Excessive swelling. Worst he ever saw.”

(Fred Miller’s books of stories are available in paperback, $10, available locally at Calcutta Giant Eagle, Pottery City Antique Mall, Museum of Ceramics, Frank’s Pastries, Davis Bros. pharmacies, and the Old Ft. Steuben gift shop.)