A beautiful young woman I know sent me a picture of herself the other day.

She is on her back in a hospital bed.

In the picture she is not a beautiful young woman, not physically at least, but a heart-breakingly bloodied, bruised and scarred person, the lucky survivor of a car accident.

The picture is several years old. Today, she is as pretty and elegant as her name, Allegra.

In the picture, though, her forehead, left cheek, chin and mouth are cut and swollen and smears of anti-bacterial ointment cover the angry cherry-, plum- and pink-shaded splotches of her skin.

She sent the picture over to make me feel good. It worked.

I think I've been maybe wallowing in some self-pity.

l

At 6:15 a.m. on Oct. 21, my wife dropped me off in the dark at the door of the SurgEase Center at Bridgeport Hospital. I'm a little early but she had to be at work in Westport at 7 a.m.

The people at Bridgeport Hospital are unfailingly nice. I am not happy that I have become so familiar with them, but the sneak attacks of squamous cell skin cancer have brought me here a number of times now. Lynn Mooney is behind the desk this morning. She is a reader, bless her soul, and we have a nice pre-operative chat about conditions in Bridgeport.

And nurses Joan Cameron and Pamela Claxton-Harris are readers as well, and, Mike Jelks, my transport guy, man, this is turning into quite the ego-boosting gathering, even as the 7:30 a.m. appointment with the blade looms.

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Any number of physicians' referrals has brought me to this morning appointment with Drs. Mark Bianchi and Lawrence J. Fliegelman, both of whom are ear, nose and throat and head and neck guys. Their business cards also mention otolaryngology. I have not asked what that is. Nor do I intend to.

The plan this day is that Dr. Bianchi will do the excavating and Dr. Fliegelman the backfilling, if you will, or what the doctors call the reconstruction.

A squamous cell cancer, the doctors will tell you, is an insidious little bugger whose tentacles can spread in all directions. When Dr. Bianchi got into my cheek, he found the cancer had spread more than he'd thought. Where the tentacles led, he followed, excising the demon. The good news is it had not gone into my mouth, or sinus, ear canal, lymph nodes or any other bad place. When Dr. Bianchi was done, there was nothing but clean margins. That's what skin cancer patients like to hear. Clean margins.

Along with his considerable skill as a facial plastic surgeon, Dr. Fliegelman brings a certain joie de vivre to his practice. At one of our initial consultations, he pulled out a sort of macabre photo album. It held photos of faces that had been reconstructed and rearranged in various sorts of patterns.

He talked with enthusiasm as he flipped through the photos of faces rearranged in patterns of rhombuses and trapezoids and triangles and various rotated flaps.

After the surgery, I could tell he was pleased with his work, as was I.

I saw him the other day and he said, "Boy, we have some great pictures from the procedure. Maybe you could put them in the Post."

"Newspaper readership is falling off fast enough," I replied.

At one point, Dr. Fliegelman's associate, Dr. Richard A. Levin popped in and introduced himself. He squatted a bit to get at eye-to-eye level and surveyed my face. After a few moments of observation he rendered his opinion.

"Wow!" he said.

I took it as a compliment to his colleague's handiwork. So I felt good.

The scar reminds me of Orion the Hunter, the constellation I would see mornings years ago when I would get up before sunrise and run with my dog. I am older now. One knee is shot so pre-dawn runs are out, but walks are okay. And for the last few weeks I've been preferring the dark to the light anyway.

For one thing, the warmth of the sun is no longer something comforting, particularly when I feel the brush of its rays now against the left side of my face. If there is a lesson here it is that the sun, just as it lights and warms our world, can also be a killer.

It killed, I learned on the first Wednesday of my recuperation, Wellington Mara, owner of the New York Giants. The sun had sent cancer into his skin and on into his lymph nodes.

Wear hats, gentle readers. Apply your sunscreen.

The other thing has been, I think, a discouraging mix of vanity and wimpishness. Slathered in anti-bacterial ointment, the healing scar is not a thing of beauty, not yet a rugged badge of survivorship.

I went to the bank the other day. It was a big step.

l

It is not just Allegra's picture that is helping me along. My wife, kids and some wonderful friends have helped, too. They have made me laugh. Not that laughing is all it's cracked up to be when you're trying to make sure the stitches in your face are holding.

People have gone through a lot worse. People I work with have gone through a lot worse. My case could have turned out a lot worse. I don't think I was meant to have a film career anyway. So I'm just going to toughen up and get on with things. Michael J. Daly is managing editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 330-6394 or by e-mail at mdaly@ctpost.com