Wednesday, January 10, 2018
My primary care physician insisted that I had to see a dermatologist about the spots on my left shoulder. I have two black raised thingies, near the neck and just above the collar bone. They grew over the space of a year to about the size of the pink part of a fingernail, almost thirty years ago, and haven't changed an iota since then. One is soft, one is hard and rough. Both have a "neck", no apparent attachment below the surface. Absolutely everyone who has ever seen them, even complete strangers, has expressed concern.
So, ok. I'll get them checked. (By the way, the chemo I had last year happens to be also used for skin cancer.)
The dermatologist looked at them. The soft one is an angioma, a benign tumor of blood vessel tissue. It never gets cancerous, and can be removed, but because they are usually full of blood, it would have to be cauterized to prevent excessive bleeding. The rough one is seborrheic keratosis, a benign tumor of the outer skin layer. It's easy to remove. They rarely go cancerous, but we should watch for changes just in case. Given how long I've had this thing with no change, it's probably not going to be a problem.
I asked him if they SHOULD be removed, and he asked me if they bothered me, and I said no, not at all, except for people bugging me about them all the time, and he said that in that case, shrug, no, neither needs removal.
I also showed him some spots on my face, both near the right whatchamacallit - the straight piece that goes from the side of my glasses to my ears - both tiny flat rough spots, one near the corner of my eye that's light brownish and one closer to my ear that's colorless. Both have appeared within the past year and a half. Again, they are both
seborrheic keratosis. He asked if they bother me? No, especially because there's a spot about an inch above the nose piece of my glasses that "goes that way" for a year or two every few years, and then it goes away. (I kind of liked it because it looked like a Hindu bindi.) Ok. They can be removed, but certainly don't need to be.
You know, my PCP spoke highly of this guy, and now I'm pretty impressed, too. Too many doctors would yell "Might be precancerous! Must do a biopsy!" to protect themselves. What the hell, it's no skin off their nose (sorry about that joke). This guy apparently has confidence in his diagnoses.
By the way, if you look up images of angiomas or seborrheic keratosis online, mine look nothing like those things. The black spots on my shoulder are oval and well-shaped, separated that tiny bit from the base by a neck, so the surrounding skin is neat. The only thing alarming about them is that they're black. The spots on my face are flat and perfectly round (for now, anyway), smaller than an eraser head.
Even though I hadn't been worried about any of it, I can't believe how much better I feel. Maybe it's just because now when people point in horror, I can say, yes, they've been checked out, and they're ok (so get off my back) (and that includes you, Dr. Primary Care). Sheesh!
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