Red patch on hand skin cancer worries

[Rebecca10]

Hi

I've had a bit of a fear of skin cancer for a while now..it started last year when a black dot just seemed to appear on my hand from out of nowhere..went to the doctors and she didn't know what it was so referred me to a dermatologist which freaked me out! Turned out to be nothing more than a tiny blood blister which I can laugh at now..

Now I've discovered a little red flat patch on the back of my hand - been there a few months and not changed from what I can tell. Stupidly I was reading about superficial basal cell carcinoma which presents itself as a red scaly patch apparently... so now I'm freaking out again. Booked an appointment with the doctor on Monday.

I'm not a sunbather but I'm very pale. Pale skin, blue eyes and blonde hair..I also travel for a living but I always wear spf 50 and I can only think of one time in my life where I burnt badly on my chest but other than that I'm pretty careful. I just don't know what else it could be because it's just a little red patch that doesn't seem to be fading!

[lofwyr]

I had a mole that went crazy. Looked very much like nodular melanoma, and the doc even thought it was. Biopsy came back benign, however, so the point I am making is that I share your fear, and awareness of our skin.

I also know skin does a lot of weird stuff, much of which could sound and even look like skin cancer, but which mostly is not. There are a lot of reasons skin can have red, scaly patches, the vast, vast majority of which are benign. If it has not changed, I cannot imagine it being a worry, but you could always go to the doc and get it looked at to be safe.

[Rebecca10]

Thank you for your reply �� I know I'm a massive worrier (which is why I'm on here!) I really wish I didn't have the desire to Google my symptoms because if I hadn't I probably wouldn't have thought anything of it as it doesn't look in the slightest bit scary it's just a small red patch of skin that sometimes can barely be seen and other times it's quite obvious. I couldn't actually find much info about superficial basal cell online it was more about basal cell so I don't know if it's supposed to get bigger on the skin or if it just stays the same size for years. I'm glad I've got an appointment but it also brings back the fear I had the first time I went to the docs about my skin cancer fear and I got referred ��

[HopelessWorrier2011]

Hi,

I wholly sympathise, I have just written a thread about nearly the same thing, scab on my arm which I could have sworn was a scaly freckle.

Health Anxiety takes over our lives and reduces our quality of living, I've only been suffering for 10 months and that's enough for me!

I'm sure you will be fine (should heed my own advice) but get it checked for peace of mind.

Take care x