Skin Tag Queen, Not Quite Dethroned, as I had hoped

Okay, so I am something like 44, I think. I can never seem to keep track of my age without having to do the math. It is like the way I still can't remember which is my right hand without remembering which arm I broke, or looking down for the "L" and "R" marks my mom made on my shoes when I was a little girl. My mind thinks in images, pictures, concepts. I see things in 3D in my head. The small specifics like that are not in the front ground. Anyway, I digress. I started getting skin tags when I was in my thirties, I think. They began in places you could not really see, like my arm pits, but in the last year or so they started showing up in places you could notice them. For example, I had one on my eyelid. It drove me absolutely bonkers. Now, we are all way more self conscious about ourselves and notice things that others do not see. An example of this for me is how I notice that in many photos one of my eyes opens more than the other. I find that it has a sort of Bill the Cat effect for me, though I know that it is not so extreme. My kids even look at me quizzically, tilt their heads and say, "What?" when I mention it.

Once I developed a skin tag there, well, you can imagine how I added that into my lovely vision of myself. I have them on my neck, my shoulders, you get the idea. So I decided that I would get them removed. I made an appointment with the dermatologist and tried not to worry about it. I had visions of how it might feel as they removed them or they dried up and fell off. I had visions of sweat invading the skin tag removal areas and hurting, but I am getting ahead of myself. Let's start from the beginning.

On Monday I went to the dermatologist to get my skin tags removed. I knew we would not do all of them at one time so I made a prioritized list in my head. The doctor came in, greeted me and asked which ones bothered me. I told her about the ones that caught on things like the seat belt, my bra. She said she could make a case to remove any of the ones that bothered me today, but that the remaining ones would have to be done at another time at a fee of 10 for $90 or 15 for $120. I am assuming that this is in addition to my $40 copay. I thought that was a bit odd. Anyway, I thought it would hurt, but it didn't. Most of them were zapped with a blast of nitroglycerin from something that looked like a tiny blow torch. It was uncomfortable, but not exactly painful. A few had to be cut off with and extremely sharp scalp. They put a bit of numbing agent on my skin and cut them off. I am not even sure that I felt those come off. We sent in some to be biopsied just to make sure they are harmless. Then I was off to home. That afternoon they swelled up and filled with water. Ellie said it looked like I had tiny, ugly balloons on my neck. Then many of them popped. The area around them is red. On Tuesday they started to discolor and were no longer puff. Today they are simply ugly and quite itchy. I am looking forward to when they fall off. I am especially happy to be rid of the one on my eyelid. I had gone in hoping to remove more of them, thus dethroning me as the Skin Tag Queen. However, at least it is a start.

My summer is nearly to an end since I go back to school next week. I haven't gotten as much done as I had hoped, especially scapbooking related activities. I am happy to report that I did finish working through the "Bling Out Your Blog" class stuff, or rather, I did most of it. I could still play a bit more, but I am happy with where my blog is. I've started work on the Jamaica album. I totally enjoyed the miniphoto editing class I took through jessicasprague.com. I find that if I am taking a class like that I make sure to carve out time for myself. Otherwise, I tend to push that time for myself to the end of my list, often not getting to it. So I am considering taking another class. I am looking at Me: The Abridged Version. You should follow my link and watch the cool little teaser video she has posted. It would get me working on stuff each day and I would document stuff about myself. It is both exciting and scary. I am also considering another jessicasprague.com class since I loved the one I took. I just don't know which one it will be. It seems a little silly to have to set this up to make myself do it, but at the same time I am thankful that I have that bit of self awareness that will get me to make making time for myself a priority.

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Cool links and posting I discovered today -

A fun, free, new photoaction called Poladriod. You can get it at http://www.poladroid.net/

I found it through Molly Irwin's blog where she has some interesting thoughts on album sizes. I loved the straightforward nature of her pages. Nothing to distract from the photos. You can read the entry here.