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. 
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