I dunno what forum this goes in, but since 85% percent of my posts usually go in MPSIMS, I think this is a safe bet.
I have a mole on my back. It’s fairly small, not raised, and is symmetrical (sp?). I don’t think it’s cancerous (plus, I’m sun screen crazy, so I always make sure it’s covered), but it is kinda weird looking. I just like the mole that much, but it doesn’t rule my life. I wear low back dresses, and I don’t mind if the mole is visible. My mother, however, really wants me to get it removed. I’ve heard that getting moles removed can be really painful, and I don’t want to go through a lot of trouble for something I don’t mind that much. Has anyone here ever had a mole removed? Did it really hurt? Are you glad you did it? Thanks
Evil Nazi moles?
I had a mole on my inner thigh frozen off. It hurt a little, not bad, but for the next week with my legs rubbing together it hurt. Oh, and then it grew back. So I got it cut out… a gross process that resembles the process for taking core samples in the ground. It didn’t hurt as much though, and the damn thing didn’t grow back again.
I’m going to have a mole on my nose removed.
I had a small, black, irregularly shaped mole on my upper lip, a very small one right on the edge. For the longest time my family thought it was a strange freckle, but my new docter said it had many charateristics of malignant moles. She directed me to a reconstructive plastic surgeon because it was on my face. All he did was carefully cut it out and stitch it up. It hasn’t ever come back and all I “suffered” was a numb upper lip from the anesthesia and two stitches that came out after a week. The scar is pratically invisible.
I’m glad I had it removed, I had wanted to since fifth grade, because I hated having this black dot on my lip. The bonus: since my doc recomended it, the removal was covered by insurance. Hope this helps, ThisYearsGirl.
If you don’t mind the way it looks, and the doctor doesn’t have a problem with it, leave it alone. Moles can be very becoming in the right places.
First thing you should do is go to a dermatologist and have him take a look at it. If the doctor thinks it looks bad, he will probably recommend it be removed. Most moles are harmless, and the doctor will tell you to leave it alone for now, but keep an eye on it.
I had a mole removed from my back about two years ago. Mine was large, about the size of a dime, and asymmetrical. The doctor told me to have it removed right away. When a suspect mole is removed, the doctor has to remove a lot of surrounding tissue, as well as tissue beneath the mole, to be sure that the whole thing is gone. I ended up with sixteen stitches, and the incision had to cauterized because it bled so much. They took a piece of flesh roughly the size and shape of an almond. It was sore for about five days, and I couldn’t do any heavy lifting while the stitches were in place. The surgery itself didn’t hurt.
The biopsy showed unusual cells, but not enough to be considered cancer. I had to have all the moles on my body looked at, and I have to have that done once a year.
Skin cancer is a serious disease, and I am glad that all I had to go through was a mole removal. Who knows what I would have had to go through if the mole had been cancerous, and I waited too long to show it to the doctor.
I hope I am not scaring you, but skin cancer is serious, and if you can prevent it, you should.
Rose
I have had several facial moles removed for simply cosmetic reasons. I ain’t much to look at, but they were shaving nuisances.
I did have two (at different times) on my back that the doctor removed because they were “dysplastic,” which have a higher rate (though not a majority) of eventually turning cancerous.
The facial moles, the doctor just “shaved” off even with the skin. That’s it. He deadened the skin, and just shaved the suckers off.
The ones on my back, though, because they were dysplastic, he “punched” them out. He has a variety of punches of varying diameters and punches out a margin around it, then scoops it out, the reason being–just in case there are any cancerous cells, they want to check out for any abnormal cells in the margin. Both of those moles required stitches (unlike the ones he just shaved off).
A mole on a woman’s back is really sexy! It defines her back structure which is very becoming. BTW, since you can’t see it, why take it off?
handy, the artist.
Have your doctor check it out. That way, if you want to tell someone to go stuff their idea of having it removed, you can say “Well, the doctor said it was un-neccesary, and that because it is un-needed, my insurance would not cover it.” Or, if it is a bad mole (I have a weird picture of a cigarette smoking, leather jacket wearing sub-terranean rodent standing on a street-corner in my head) you can get it removed before it gets positivly evil. Either way, nobody can really bother you about it any more.