My annual skin check is coming up next week. Normally it doesn't worry me at all, just another routine maintenance in healthcare, akin to getting an oil change or the tires rotated.
But this year, as before, I make a note on my phone of skin changes (new moles, marks, oddities and questions) and normally there is maybe three things I want to ask him about. Well, for whatever reason, probably because I am a guy who is 48 and not 28, I have a ton of developments, changes etc to ask him about. The list is really, really long. I wasn't making a note of these things in order to freak myself out, I was just making sure I didn't forget anything, something I learned for my cardiology appointments.
Now I have a couple new moles, what looks like a dry age spot on my nose that hasn't evolved, but seems different from other age spots, one age spot that changed a bit, grew a darker patch in it, a mole that is on the larger side, doesn't look nasty, but itches, what is probably a larger dermatofibroma on the back of my left knee, an odd whitish looking mole or cyst on the rim of my left ear, an odd reddish brown flat spot on the other side of my nose, and then on top of all that, I have bucket loads of moles that need checking from previous life.
I am job security for dermatologists.
Nothing I had listed gives me too much pause. None of it really seems like actual melanoma--the only thing that makes me too nervous--basal cell and squamous cell are something I will deal with if and when they show. My folks both have had them, so I expect I will deal with it one day too, but not too worried about them. It was just the actual sum total of the mess my skin is becoming. Aging isn't for wimps, I guess, and suddenly felt a bit wimpy.
Thought I would share, not so much because I am waking in panic, but because I am going through it too, and I came to a small epiphany about my anxiety.
Anytime in my life that I have been evaluated--school tests, medical tests, military training etc, it has always made me nervous. I want to do well. I want to perform at a high level. My career, my performance, and my health are all important to me. And these appointments bring back that old feeling, that old performance anxiety (not the other kind, thank god).
So, I will allow myself *some* anxiety as I wait for this dermatologist appointment. I will let myself feel a bit nervous, but I won't google. I won't constantly recheck the same spot on my skin obsessively fifty times a day. I will accept the nervousness because it is part of me. It is part of who I am. I am a guy who wants to very much do well on his next test. This test just happens to be a skin check.
To those waiting in the wings for their annual or special dermatologist appointment, allow yourself a little nervousness. I find that when I accept it, it seems to lose a bit of control over me.
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