Sebhorreic Keratosis

Compared with other bloggers recently, I feel like Brody in Jaws, when the other two guys are showing off their hideous scars and he secretly looks down at his own, perhaps an appendectomy, and wisely decides it’s not impressive or gruesome enough to reveal. Except I’m not that wise.

Sebhorreic Keratosis: otherwise ‘thing-gy’, with a hard ‘g’.

I had this thing-gy on my face. I didn’t think it was too bad until I saw pictures of a concert I was in and realised how prominent it looked, even though I was hiding in my customary place at the back of the stage. Worse, I thought it red until told it was brown. They look the same to me.

I think my family had become used to it and didn’t notice any more. I zoomed into past photographs to see how long it had been there. It appeared as a small mark around 2005, and by 2018 had grown to a centimeter across. It almost doubled in size over a year.

I told the doctor I’d come about this thing-gy. After prodding, wiggling and stretching it, he pronounced it sebhorreic keratosis, not easy to pronounce at all. I knew the first word from shampoo bottles. Head & Shoulders bottles used to mention sebhorreic dermatitis but they mention only nicer things now. The worst it gets is “visible flakes”. Anyway, the doctor said it was harmless but did I want it removed? It was only on the surface and nowhere near any facial nerves. A cosmetic procedure.

Around six months later I attended his surgery at the local G.P. practice. He injected some anaesthetic, commented how surprisingly hard it was, scraped away the tissue with a scalpel, and corterised it. Apart from a tugging sensation, scraping sounds and a burning smell, it was not unpleasant.

He left me to be tidied up by the nurse who had helped. She assured me that actually, if anything, despite a round charcoal mark, it looked much better now than before because it was no longer raised. Aren’t nurses wonderful! She was wearing one of those NHS polythene aprons too, tied tight, shiny and shapely.

Within a few days the beard hairs were growing through and within a few weeks it had disappeared completely. 

Unfortunately, six months ago it started coming back. There were two small brown raised spots at the upper and lower edges of where it had been. There was no chance of treatment during covid overload, but my cousin, who also suffers them and is a nurse, said she just puts wart remover on hers. I said the local pharmacy wouldn’t let me have any. “That’s because you were silly enough to tell them what you wanted it for,” she said. 

She pointed me to Boots where you simply pick it off the shelves. Cousin said get the strongest. I got the weakest: ‘Wartie’. The instructions emphasise it is only for warts and on no account should it be used on the face. I dabbed it on my face, on the thing-gy, daily for three weeks then leave for a week. After three months it has nearly gone.

Now, should I tell you about the epididymal cyst?