doc said it was a solar thingy and got the nurse to freeze it off.
google isn’t finding any pics that look like mine
OTOH neither are skin cancers.
nurse said it could take a week or two to fall off.
whats the difference and how can I be suer?
I also had one on my cheek (that one really hurt with freezing)

more like this one, the lower brown one

or this

I’ve had several of these frozen off the back of my right hand. Their appearance can vary between very pale pink, vaguely circular splotches to darker and more obviously raised. They’re very common once you hit middle age, which is why I’m happy to trust my GP’s judgment as to what they are (she’s had quite a few herself).

My doc has a machine that takes a picture of these skin things and gives them a score. If the score is high enough he will cut it out and send it off for a biopsy.

However, he frequently burns off miscellaneous things, particularly on my head and the back of my hands just on the basis of looking at it, sometimes with a magnifying glass.

You have to trust their judgement. They do a lot of it.

purple said:

doc said it was a solar thingy and got the nurse to freeze it off.
google isn’t finding any pics that look like mine
OTOH neither are skin cancers.
nurse said it could take a week or two to fall off.
whats the difference and how can I be suer?
I also had one on my cheek (that one really hurt with freezing)

It’s not something you should google pics of. They vary too much.

Solar keratosis precedes cancer in some cases (sometimes called premalignant). There’s a small risk that they develop into skin cancer, if it’s still there in two weeks, go back.

yeah the images were widely varied. if it doesn’t go after the fortnight I will go back.
thanks for the input :)

Looks like many of them don’t ever develop into anything anyway:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10951246