About two years ago I had gone in to have a mole removed off of the front of my right hip. There wasn't anything in particular that was wrong with it that it needed to be removed, but it was rather large, and in a spot that was more likely to get irritated since I had started climbing, with wearing a harness or just hiking my leg way up. The way they remove them is sorta neat; they inject some lido/nova/whatever-caine into the mole itself, and some just underneath it. This serves to numb the area, and also to sort of puff up the skin under it, so they they can just sort of _peel_ it off with a pair of tweezers, and a little strategic cutting with the scapel here and there. While I was getting this one removed, my dermatologist did a once-over of my other moles, and didn't much like the look of a darker one on my chest. That one came off, too, and a good thing it did. The biopsy on that one came back "pre-cancerous", which is not really a bad thing, per se, but just meant that I needed to be vigilant about putting on the sunscreen, and watching out for any of my other moles to change shape/color/size drastically.

Finally got around to making my quote-unquote "yearly" appointment a few weeks ago, and went in this morning for my skin check. Everything looked ok, except for a large one on my back, that apparently was more than one color. A quick sting and some scraping later, and I'm minus a mole. It feels good to be keeping up with health things, and taking care of these sorts of issues before they become problems.

Also, I am in good company with mole removal. Yay Heather!