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I have recently been going crazy thinking i have melanoma. i have some moles but they are all little except for one on my face but i eventually stopped stressing over that one because i realized its normal. i just saw another one, well i think it’s a mole and i’m freaking out now. i have an appointment with my derm but it’s in a week and it’s hard waiting that long. googling pictures of normal moles is so hard and when i google ones of cancer they are so advanced. i’m freaking out not knowing if what i found is normal or not. i’m also new to this site so sorry if this is to long.

Okay, so this is my first time on a health anxiety forum so here we go! I have always been a pretty healthy individual. I rarely get sick and always have a lot of energy. Sometime anxiety can change those things though! I'm sure we have all been there. I noticed a new mole about a year ago. I said something to my boyfriend about it at the time since I was freaking out and beginning to have a panic attack. He swears up and down that I have had this mole for as long as he can remember (we've been together for 3 years). I am 21 y/o so I think its relatively normal to still develop new moles at this age. I never noticed it before in my life! Perhaps it was just in a difficult location to see? It is on my left breast under my areola. (sorry for anyone grossed out by boobs) ((don't know why you would be but you never know these days))... So I guess without really lifting my breast up to purposely look under it I probably would have never noticed. Anyhow, I sort of continued to freak out about it since it is slightly raised, has two darker spots in the middle and has sort of an "egg- like" appearance. It is smaller than a pencil eraser and hasn't appeared to grown or change in the last year. I went to my family doc about 6 mo ago and she looked at it from a distance (clearly not concerned) and said I was fine and shouldn't worry. So what did I do? I worried. I decided to see another doctor in that office and she thoroughly examined it and measured it for me. She said it seemed like we were in the clear but she wanted to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't grow or change. That was about 2 mo ago and here I am freaking out again!! Typical health anxiety. Sometimes I don't know what to do with myself. Medication makes me a zombie and counseling never worked, but that's for another topic. Anyhow, the point to this insanely long post is that I need help identifying whether I should be scared or if anyone else out there has similar issues or anxieties? I think I really just need some support from some fellow anxiety sufferers! Thank you for replies in advance.

Hi Everyone -- as some of you may know, I am new here and have lately been suffering from a major flare-up of health anxiety (some of which is attributable to the fact I weaned off some anti-anxiety meds earlier this year and am now re-starting up on Lexapro, which is creating more increased anxiety until it settles in). My primary health phobia at this point is skin c****r, after seeing an article on Facebook on it, making the extreme mistake of consulting Dr. Google, and diagnosing myself with skin c****r and/or sebaceous gland c****r. When I worry about a medical concern, I tend to always take immediate action and schedule an appointment with the doctor -- so a few weeks ago I visited the dermatologist for a full skin screening, all of which was fine, and she confirmed that the bumps on my forehead were benign "sebaceous hyperplasia", an enlargement of the oil glands (not the basal cell c****r I had diagnosed myself with). I subsequently went back to have them electrically zapped off. Some of them did not dissolve completely, so I had another appointment today for a "re-zapping". Lately, however, I've been completely obsessed with a mole I had removed fifteen months ago from the back of my calf -- it was normal looking, light brown, uniform in color, etc. and I had just had it checked by a different dermatologist who told me it was normal/benign. I didn't like the looks of it cosmetically, so I found an on-line home remedy of using apple cider vinegar to remove moles and skin tags. Essentially, I applied the vinegar daily until it scabbed and fell off, leaving pink skin underneath and now (fifteen months later) it's just a fading pink scar. The dermatologist told me the site looked fine, as did my PCP, but after doing more googling I found an obscure reference that the method should never be used and could cause c****rous changes. so of course, I've been freaking for the last five weeks convinced I somehow created c****rous changes that just can't be seen on the surface. So, I sought reassurance from the dermatologist, my PCP, an online consult with a dermatologist, and even my son's pediatrician when I brought him in for a visit the other day (Yes, I AM crazy!) that using the vinegar could not cause c****rous changes into the skin or bloodstream, and that if it was a dangerous mole it would not have just scabbed and fallen off -- it may have been a surface mole or a seborhheic (?) keratosis, a benign growth. Despite those reassurances, I've still been obsessing over that scar that's left and what I had done. So today, I had to go back to the dermatologist for the "re-zapping" of the other spots, and I asked her if she could zap off the remaining scar that is there so I no longer have to look at it. She said she could certainly do that, and suggested that first she would scrape off a bit of it to send for a biopsy, presumably just to make me feel better (again, she made nothing of it when I told her at the first visit what I had done and when she looked at the site). Of course, now it's seven to ten days for the results of the biopsy to come in and I know my anxiety will still be flaring until then. Whats left of the "rational" me at this point knows it's very likely it will be normal and she did it for my peace of mind, knowing how much it was bothering me. The anxious part of me is stressed to the nines. Any thoughts or reassurances from any of you would sure be comforting........

Hi Everyone -- as some of you may know, I am new here and have lately been suffering from a major flare-up of health anxiety (some of which is attributable to the fact I weaned off some anti-anxiety meds earlier this year and am now re-starting up on Lexapro, which is creating more increased anxiety until it settles in). My primary health phobia at this point is skin c****r, after seeing an article on Facebook on it, making the extreme mistake of consulting Dr. Google, and diagnosing myself with skin c****r and/or sebaceous gland c****r. When I worry about a medical concern, I tend to always take immediate action and schedule an appointment with the doctor -- so a few weeks ago I visited the dermatologist for a full skin screening, all of which was fine, and she confirmed that the bumps on my forehead were benign "sebaceous hyperplasia", an enlargement of the oil glands (not the basal cell c****r I had diagnosed myself with). I subsequently went back to have them electrically zapped off. Some of them did not dissolve completely, so I had another appointment today for a "re-zapping". Lately, however, I've been completely obsessed with a mole I had removed fifteen months ago from the back of my calf -- it was normal looking, light brown, uniform in color, etc. and I had just had it checked by a different dermatologist who told me it was normal/benign. I didn't like the looks of it cosmetically, so I found an on-line home remedy of using apple cider vinegar to remove moles and skin tags. Essentially, I applied the vinegar daily until it scabbed and fell off, leaving pink skin underneath and now (fifteen months later) it's just a fading pink scar. The dermatologist told me the site looked fine, as did my PCP, but after doing more googling I found an obscure reference that the method should never be used and could cause c****rous changes. so of course, I've been freaking for the last five weeks convinced I somehow created c****rous changes that just can't be seen on the surface. So, I sought reassurance from the dermatologist, my PCP, an online consult with a dermatologist, and even my son's pediatrician when I brought him in for a visit the other day (Yes, I AM crazy!) that using the vinegar could not cause c****rous changes into the skin or bloodstream, and that if it was a dangerous mole it would not have just scabbed and fallen off -- it may have been a surface mole or a seborhheic (?) keratosis, a benign growth. Despite those reassurances, I've still been obsessing over that scar that's left and what I had done. So today, I had to go back to the dermatologist for the "re-zapping" of the other spots, and I asked her if she could zap off the remaining scar that is there so I no longer have to look at it. She said she could certainly do that, and suggested that first she would scrape off a bit of it to send for a biopsy, presumably just to make me feel better (again, she made nothing of it when I told her at the first visit what I had done and when she looked at the site). Of course, now it's seven to ten days for the results of the biopsy to come in and I know my anxiety will still be flaring until then. Whats left of the "rational" me at this point knows it's very likely it will be normal and she did it for my peace of mind, knowing how much it was bothering me. The anxious part of me is stressed to the nines. Any thoughts or reassurances from any of you would sure be comforting........