Escentual Beauty Blog of the Week - and a ramble on stress, moles and scars

To say I was gobsmacked to find that I am Beauty Blog of the week at Escentual.com would be a bit of an understatement.

 

Not least because I've felt fairly rubbish about my blog recently. I'm a stressy old cow, and when I stress I don't write and all the things I intended to blog pile up. Being a stay at home Mum out of necessity as well as choice can bring a whole set of anxieties all their very own when the economic climate is teetering as it is.

And then you go and throw in Mr Multi Coloured Slightly Irregular Mole who has this afternoon as expected been declared fine but will be given his marching orders as a precaution. He's been there for quite some time, as long as I can remember. I asked the GP about him sometime ago, in the days when you were allowed to ask casual questions of GPs. At the time I was told it looked fine but to keep an eye on it, they could take it off if I wanted. At the time, following 2 cesareans and a breast lump removal I preferred to wait and monitor. Surgery seems to leave a kind of numbness around the site of the scar on me, and it wasn't something I felt like dealing with at the time.

This last summer though I've been of the distinct inclination that my dear friend is bigger and darker than he once was. Logically I know that my calves are much chunkier now and that this has had a bearing on size. These days though it's one appointment one problem when you see a GP, no slipping it in for a quick opinion. You have to make a THING of it. Either phoning up on the day to make what used to be called an emergency appointment or booking weeks in advance which you don't want because once there's an appointment that slight niggle of a question has become a BIG THING. What if you've missed something? What if that Dr was wrong and it's been festering a way all these years? See I'm a dreadful worry bag.

Last week I did need an 'emergency' appointment, it can take about 15 minutes queuing  on the phone - whilst your making school lunches and hustling dreamy children into their uniform, to get one of those. So I booked an advanced one as well just in case. With 2 appointments in the bag it wasn't quite such a big THING if the second one got used to question the dodgyness of my friend. 

Of course the GP pronounced it as I thought - probably fine but lets get it checked just in case. The niggle becomes that little bit bigger, the THING ness of it has been unleashed. Have I been a bad girl letting it stay around these extra years......

I have to say I was probably as relieved to hear the Consultant say they'd remove it as a precaution because it fits the criteria for removal, as I was to hear him say it was fine, because logically i knew it was fine but emotionally I'm well rid of the thing.

Speaking of scars and numbness BioOil are donating £1 to the British Skin Foundation for every skin story told on their Facebook page. I've never used BioOil - I was put off by it's mineral oil content and you can read my views on stretchmark prevention on Colin's Beauty Pages - but it's a great cause and well worth taking the time to share your stories and it may help other women feel better about themselves. Reading British Beauty Blogger's post about women prevented from being intimate due to their stretchmarks and scars is probably what motivated this confessional.

I bawled my eyes out when I first removed my cesarean dressing, I have a lopsided flap of a belly where one of the babes was obviously lying and stretched the skin more on one side than the other and huge stretchmarks on my very saggy boobs where they went off the scale when my milk came in. I don't care for the damage it's done, but I prefer to think of it more in terms of Mel Gibson and Rene Russo comparing battle scars in Lethal Weapon and I sure as hell wouldn't let it stop me shagging my husband!

On that note I'll shut up and return to my original point, which was just how overwhelmed was to be made Escentual Beauty Blog of the Week