I am driving myself nuts. I have an upcomming Derm appointment but I looked online first, and scared myself silly about nodular melanoma. I am 28 yrs old.
I am a picker. I get acne a lot on my arms and I pop them.
I have one red spot on my right side of my ribcage. Its small and not too elevated. I have picked at it often, and I believe it has been there for as long as two years.
On by left arm/back (where they meet) I have another hard spot that I know I have picked at a lot. This hard spot has been there for over a year as well. It currently has a scab on it from me picking and the skin around the scab is raised. There are a couple small hard spots by this one that I have picked at as well. I assumed these were just all acnes.
Of all these little hard spots they are colored by the blood under the skin (when I press on them they become white and then fade back to red).
All of these hard spots have been picked at. I don't know if they were acne at one point or not, but I know I picked at them as if they were. They have not gotten really big, but like I said I have picked.
I never knew there was such a thing as nodular melanoma till I looked it up. My question is, would melanoma act differently than I have described? What I have does not look like the pictures of melanoma online, but I do pick at them. I assumed that Melanoma would be harder, or more obvious than what I have, but I'm scared big time that I have had it and just been slicing off the top layers for a long long time. Never did any of these spots have some color to them to make me scared, I read how nodular is usually very dark.
Also, if it were Melanoma for a year or more, would it be more obvious, even with picking? I read how nodular is super fast acting and I am talking about spots I have had for 12+ months. Just really scared.