The one word you probably don’t want your doctor to say when examining you

This is a pretty fair rendition of what my skin on my forehead looks like at the moment. Yes. I have a fringe to cover it

This is a pretty fair rendition of what my skin on my forehead looks like at the moment. Yes. I have a fringe to cover it

There are some words you never ever want to hear a dermatologist mention. Clearly melanoma and malignant are chief amongst those but allow me to be superficial for a second and add another. Trust me, you never want to hear your dermatologist say “oh it’s only a barnacle” as she examines your skin through a super magnifying lens which she actually puts to the side when she sees your barnacle. Something that big does not need magnification.

Barnacles are found on the bottom of ships. And on whales.

To be fair the barnacle had another much more sophisticated medical term which I can’t even remember now but I’m sure if I were to google it there would be pictures of the bottom of boats. Of whales and of hideous, dehydrated, lumpy, old person skin.

The truth is although “barnacles” are a little bit genetic (my dad has beautiful warm open arms but they look a lot like very weathered boat oars) they are also a “side effect” of age.

As I adjusted to this little snippet of news from the dermatologist she went on to examine the rest of my body, I had a melanoma many years ago and I am fastidious about having my skin checked. A couple of times she stopped to examine something a little closer and invariably she would brush it off with a quick “oh it’s just an age spot”.

Gupta is a trusted sexologist who has a super specialty clinic cialis australia of Dr. This nutrient also helps to prevent broken or displayed penis capillaries from showing on the surface cialis 20mg tablets of penile skin. Besides them, avoiding discount viagra cialis overdose or increased dose is strict NO-NO. Impotence medications are very famous drugs worldwide. cheapest cialis from india Skin. What is going on with you? Why are you trying to pretend you are the covering of a really old person? I don’t feel old. I feel about 25. Sometimes 14.

Sometimes I still feel like I’m playing house, often I hear my child call me mommy and I have to remind myself that it’s not my mom he wants – I really am old enough (and then some) to be the mother of a 12 year old.

I am still surprised when I’m not asked for ID and that people don’t gasp when I tell them how long I’ve been married. Or how long I have been out of school.  I am always shocked when I meet a professional person old enough to be my child –  doctors especially. Seriously, how young are doctors these days?

My body is getting older and sometimes my eyes are too – when I see “the youth of today” dressed in pants that hang on the ground – the waist, not the hem, and I will admit to getting irritated by people speaking in gangster talk and stuff but my mind is still very, very young. And I can’t help wondering when I am going to feel older.

When I was a little girl I used to look at my mother and almost admire how old she was. When she had friends over and I was shooed out the room I used to imagine that she was having lofty, intelligent conversations about very important worldly matters.  Now that I am the same age as her I have friends over and we talk about how much weight we’ve put on, we talk about Offspring and where we should eat dinner. We talk about our kids a lot and we laugh at really stupid, immature jokes.  There is nothing lofty or supremely intelligent about our conversations and it leads me to wonder if I just hang with immature people or maybe that’s what my mother WAS talking about. She just seemed so … old and I don’t .

Are barnacles my sign of maturity or does my mind still have a long way to catch up to my skin. Is age a number or a feeling?