From the archives : Unexpected expenses.

Now flying is an expensive hobby, I’ve never been under any illusions about that. But unlike a lot of women I don’t have a significant purse or shoe habit so I kind of justify it that way.

I thought I had a pretty good handle on all the requisite money to be paid out. Ground school, textbooks, charts, headset, medical, endless copies of the CFS* and so on and so forth. Here’s one I wasn’t expecting though, around $150 bucks to what seemed to be a Botox factory.

Let me explain a little bit. I have two fairly large pigmented skin tags on the right side of my neck. Which for the past 30 odd years have caused me very few problems. They do; however, bleed like hell if I catch them. And therein lies the problem. The seatbelt on the Cessna 172 starts from the centre of the plane (not the side as you would expect in a car). This means that the seatbelt presses into them and occasionally cuts them. I prefer not to bleed over other people’s vehicles so I thought I would investigate removal of them.

Normally I don’t hold with googling reviews of doctors and stuff because opinions are so subjective but this time I’m glad I did, I went in forewarned that it was basically a Botox joint and would probably try the hard sell. They did, they seemed more interested in trying to sell me laser treatment for my rosacea** than removing the tags.

Well they are not going to get to do either. I’m not paying $150 to have a couple of tags removed. I’ll resort to the low tech method of sticking a band aid over them if I can’t get my hands on some liquid nitrogen and do the job myself.

 

* By the end of his flight training RTH had enough copies to construct a small fort in his study!

** the doctor was slick, I’ll give them that, but I’m actually well aware of what caused it and the effectiveness of various treatments. I also noticed that the waiting room was kept deliberately hot and dry, all things guaranteed to make the condition worse! You’ve got to admire that level of hard selling.