I know, it’s not a pretty picture, or an awesome thing to talk about, but let’s face it, we all either have one or a few, or we know someone who has them.

I had my first skin tag when I was 23 years old.  I was living with my ex-boyfriend in Los Angeles and all of a sudden out of nowhere, these long skinny skin growths started appearing under my bottom lip.  Every time I shaved I would end up shaving them off and I’d have to hold toilet paper on them until the bleeding stopped.  Every time I cut them, more would grow, in fact it would multiply until I had so many it looked like a soul patch, but with skin tags instead of hair.  I don’t know what made me think of it but I shaved them all off one day and then put hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball and held it against my bottom lip until it stopped bleeding, and they never came back.

Over the last three or four years I have noticed skin tags growing on my neck and my back.  I had one next to my eye but it disappeared for some reason.  But the ones on my neck and back have gotten bigger and there are more now than there ever were before.  I talked to my doctor about them many months ago and he told me that they could treat them there, but they never did.

Yesterday when we went to the doctor’s office I asked him about the skin tags and he had the nurse bring him a little cup with some liquid nitrogen with some Q-tips.  He had me take off my shirt and he proceeded to press the liquid nitrogen against each and every skin tag on my back and neck.  I thought there were only a few, but I think he must have burned about 20 or 30 of them.  He told me that they would take 7-10 days to fall off by themselves.

As we got in the car to leave, I looked at the skin tags on my neck in the mirror and they were red and puffy.  They were definitely swollen.  He told me that it probably wouldn’t work on the larger ones and that those would need to be cut off at a dermatologists office, but he pressed the liquid nitrogen against them anyway.  I couldn’t believe how they blew up like a balloon lol.

Today, the skin tags have shrunk down to more than half their original size.  They are like little tiny dots all over my neck and back.  The bigger ones are still big, but they are smaller than they were before the liquid nitrogen.  I really hope that they do fall off and that there aren’t any scars.  Although, to be honest I would rather have scars than to still have skin tags.

I thought I was getting them because of my weight issue, but he told me that weight has nothing to do with it and that you can be skinny and get them.  Well, I guess he’s right because I was skinny when I had them on my lower lip.  I Googled “Skin Tags” and looked at images (which is where I got the image above) and found pictures of newborn babies with skin tags, so it’s not just adults who have them.

If you have skin tags, ask your doctor about burning them off with liquid nitrogen.  It only stung just a little, it actually felt like bee stings, but helpful bee stings.  Not that I know what bee stings feel like, but I’m just guessing.  But I would look into it rather than doing it yourself.