Handbook for the Recently Sixtysomething: Skin-tags, they’ll grow on you

Do you remember in the movie Beetlejuice when the ghosts of Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are given a book, the Handbook For The Recently Deceased? 

I think the same thing should happen after we turn 60.  Someone should give us a handbook for what’s coming.

WARNING:  Skin photos ahead.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

10 years ago, shortly before my 52nd birthday, I grew… something on my left shoulder.  It looked like an eraser on a No. 2 pencil.  

Was it a wart?  I googled warts and read they usually disappear on their own. 

So I left it alone, but it never went away.  And then several years later, 4 smaller ones grew on my neck: I was up to 5 total.

Then a year before I turned 60, two more joined the party.  Both eraser-sized like my shoulder, but on my waist & inner thigh.

Only that one on my waist really bothered me, if I was wearing pants with my belt notched too tight.  But STILL that wasn’t the end!

I grew small, droopy ones under both of my arms, 10 total.  I read that nearly half of all people will develop skin-tags in their lifetime, and they’re more common around age 60.

Oh well, welcome to old age!

The eraser on my shoulder (that’s been with me for 10 years)

When I was in the hospital last April for a kidney stone, after a nurse had inserted a catheter to help the stone pass, a doctor came in and asked how I was doing. 

I said good, but asked if we could we go after my skin-tags next.  I was kidding, but he came closer and said “Show me”.  He examined the 4 on my neck (one large, one small on each side).  He asked if there were any others.

I said there was a large one on my shoulder, two large ones below the belt, 6 tags in my left underarm and 4 in my right.  He actually took the time to look at them.

He told me the ones on my neck and underarms could be snipped or frozen, the larger ones would require cosmetic surgery.  I could forget about my insurance paying for them though.

The nurse later told me her mother helped get rid of hers by taping on cotton balls soaked in witch-hazel.  I thanked her for the tip, asked how many she had; she said 3.  I had 18.  That’s a lot of cotton balls to change daily.

I did some research, and found several other ‘home remedies’ people claimed had faster success— one was cotton balls soaked in Tea Tree Oil.  I ordered a bottle from Amazon and that stuff was AWFUL—it smelled like tree sap soaked in kerosene! 

I still tried it though, reapplying 5 cotton balls nightly (on my shoulder & neck) for almost a month.  The tea tree oil did nothing but smell up my undershirts.

And then one night while googling skin-tag removal suggestions, I found this little contraption on Ebay.

You use that cone with the needle-sized tip to slide a silicone band to the bottom.  Then you slide that “L” shaped handle over the top, press it against your skin and pop out that cone. 

You now have a silicone band stretched around your skin-tag.  (You can see one above in that photo of my neck.)

If it stays on (a few of mine popped off after getting soapy in the shower), the skin-tag turns black after a week and begins to shrink. 

You don’t pull them off, you let them fall off on their own.  Mine all seemed to fall off & wash down the drain in the shower.

It would’ve been nice if one kit contained bands for different sized skin-tags, but no such luck.  I had to buy 3 kits, one at $16.99 and 2 for $14.99 each, one for large, the other two for medium and micro (small). 

The underarm tags took 2 weeks to fall off; the ones on my neck took almost twice as long.  It’s not an entirely painless procedure, for the first 2-3 days I felt like I was being pinched constantly.  After that, they only bothered me when my clothes would snag on them.

I had red welts in my underarms for a couple weeks after the skin-tags fell off.  The welts are gone now and there’s no evidence anything was there at all. 

After my neck & underarms were clear, I went after the three largest ones.  (The ones on my shoulder, waistline & thigh.) 

They WERE painful, for a couple weeks.  They bled sometimes too.  As they got smaller, I changed the bands to smaller sizes.  It took two months before those last 3 were finally gone.  I was left with some pretty sore welts.

But the other morning after my shower, I was toweling off—and realized the last of the welts had finally faded.  All 18 are gone, not a mark to be found. 

I’ll ultimately lose in the Game of Life, but this game of tag was over and I won.