Feeling better...

For one, the snow didn't last long - thankfully. As I suspected it was all gone by about noontime. Well, it was gone everywhere but in our shady backyard tundra. We always seem to be the last holdout when it comes to snowmelt, but even our backyard snow was gone by dinnertime. So, I can once again look outside and see early spring with its lovely brown grass and bare tree branches and mud. However, I can once again look forward to the budding leaves and flowers and the warmer temps...which aren't happening this weekend, unfortunately. Tomorrow's high is only going to be 44 degrees...so glad I bought those sleeveless dresses for the girls to wear for Easter. Grumble, grumble. At least I had the foresight to buy sweaters to match.

Secondly, I think I have adequately self-diagnosed (with the help of Dr. Google) my seasonal allergy. I don't know exactly what I am allergic to but I now have strong suspicions that I suffer from early spring allergies to some tree pollen or other. I bought some Claritin at the store on Tuesday and took my first dose. The rest of Tuesday I continued to be miserable and began to think that maybe I just had a cold after all, since the antihistimines weren't cutting it. However, I took a second dose Wednesday morning and by evening I had improved markedly and was even able to manage a decent workout. I am still a bit sniffly but overall I am so much better and the tickly/scratchy throat is gone. So, I'll be on the Claritin for a while. Just when I can stop taking it, I have no idea. I guess I'll be doing some experimenting this year to try to figure out when my allergy season ends. If I recall correctly, my "spring cold" usually lasted about 3-4 weeks in past years. With that in mind, I'll stay on the Claritin until the end of this month and then stop taking it and see how it goes.

And in other news of the weird (and kind of gross), I finally made a much needed appointment with the dermatologist. I take after dear old Dad who is of 100% Irish decent and I have very fair, freckly skin. I always complain to my parents that since I'm the last of five kids that all the melanin was used up by my siblings and there was none left for me. So, I decided it was finally time for a trip to the dermatologist for my first ever skin check - being in such a high-risk population for skin cancers and all. I also had an actual reason to go since I had a small lesion/blemish on my left forearm that started off as an itchy bump (that I picked, of course...thinking it was an ingrown hair) and it never seemed to go back to 'normal' skin. After a month of looking at it and wondering about it I figured I'd just get it looked at by a trained professional. Ya know...since Dr. Google wasn't able to diagnose anything for me and none of the pictures or descriptions I found online were exactly comforting. After a brief visit my skin was deemed mostly healthy - except for that one spot on my arm that he decided to treat by freezing it with liquid nitrogen. He could not be completely certain without a biopsy but felt that it was a common, easily treatable and non-malignant form of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma. He told me that the freezing treatment should clear it up quickly and that if I still see something there after a month I should come back for a biopsy to rule out something more serious. Hopefully the freezing will do the trick nicely. He did not seemed concerned so I will not worry about it for now. He left me with the parting advice to use copious amounts of sunscreen and to return yearly for check-ups since I'm in such a high-risk group. Okey-dokey. Will do. And for now I have a lovely blister on my forearm to stare at and to serve as an example of why I should use plenty of sunscreen and try to avoid the mid-day rays more often than I have in the past. Oh, and as a bonus I managed to score some highly potent corticosteroid cream to treat some nasty dry patches on my knees that I've had forever, it seems, and just never bothered to find out exactly how to treat them. I have one particuarly stubborn patch on my right knee that he felt might require further treatment with a cortisone injection. But, first I'll give the cream a shot for about a month.

I've been spending a lot of time getting my body ready for shorts and t-shirt season and now maybe my skin will be in better shape for summer, too!