Our managing editor, Stephanie Wasek, had a salivary mucocele removed from the inside of her right cheek last month. I scrubbed in to observe while her surgeon removed, one tiny red shard at a time, the little friend that had been growing inside her mouth for three months - which is how Steph referred to what the op report said was either a "lesion" or a "neoplasm of uncertainty." The cause: Her incisors had landed wrong on a hard bite down. We hired a photographer to take photos, nearly 700 of them, not only so Steph could see what she looked like intubated and oh-so-happy on Versed, but also so we could illustrate the stories we bring you.