@colleenyoung You're right! Stage 1 instead of Stage 2 is a good typo to make/have.

@barbjo I am glad to hear the area is healing well for you. In my experience, although a doctor may have an initial plan for details of a surgery of any kind, they need to remain flexible and be aware that plan might be modified somewhat. It sounds like what happened here, except you were not fully informed, perhaps. A review of the surgery site on day of surgery brought a change in plans.

An elliptical incision typically is done to minimize a resulting scar and align with the normal skin creases. If the area has little fat or loose skin, it can be mighty uncomfortable as it heals, and the particular location may be prone to pulling on the incision if stitches are used. Not knowing how large the area is that you had excised, that might have been the case, and an open incision would heal cleaner. In my situation, they did a flap incision, pulling over the skin on my forearm. That hurt like the dickens healing, as the skin was stretched out over the 32 stitch horseshoe shaped scar! A recent squamous cell surgery was done as an open incision, in my eyebrow, because it was small and stitches would have pulled the surrounding tissues.

Check with your doctor to ask what the best method to address the scar will be, perhaps a good Vitamin E cream. And, wear sunscreen!
Ginger