Hey guys,
So, been a weird month for me. I haven't popped in with anxiety much lately, as I had been doing pretty good. But then a couple of things happened that made me spiral a bit.
First, a couple of months ago I noticed I had very distinct Beaus' ridges on most, but not all of my toe and finger nails. I actually did not panic right away, and did some straight up research about them. I was initially pretty proud of myself, as I googled and remained intact. I discovered the lines I am seeing are at least six months old, and that coincides well with an increase dosage of metoprolol (a beta blocker). Many metoprolol users get Beau's lines, so I really wrote it off to the medication and relaxed.
I should say I am spending the wnter 2000 miles from where my health care system is and where my insurance works, which is what led me to google. I won't be back there until the end of April.
Fast forward to this morning and I was in the shower, and I do a self skin check every month or two. Nothing obsessive, just a quick look for something or anything new or changed. I discovered a lot of new, very tiny cherry angiomas, all on my upper arms. I have loads of them, and have never worried about them or even given them much thought after the first one I got 20 or so years ago. But I do have an aortic aneurysm (not worried about it, just one of those things) and curiosity got the better of me and I was looking to see if there was any sort of tie between the two. Don't worry, there is nothing there, no link at all, so you are fine if you are reading this with cherry angiomas.
But while I thought I was using google responsibly, I read one line that changed my entire day and sent me spiraling. It said cherry angiomas are completely harlmess (I knew that) but a sudden appearance of a lot of them could indicate internal malignancy. Well, I have a ton of new ones, as I said, all on my upper arms. I have some big ones that have been around forever, but these are tiny, most the size of a pin hear or smaller. Maybe 20 to 30 new ones, spread over mostly my bicep areas. To be truthful, I am not sure how long they have been showing up, so some could be months old, but they seem new to me.
I know they show up more and more often as we age, and at 48 I am in the fertile zone for these ugly little things, but vague words like "internal malignancy" from some web page really shook me. Had I not just noticed these all I would be pleasantly oblivious, I wish I knew when they had started to show up. Additionally, if I had not googled the damn things I would be fine too.
Anyone has sudden crops of them seem to turn up out of the blue?
Thanks for letting me vent and try to crawl out of my anxiety fueled regression. I had been doing so well too.
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