I know, I know you probably get tired of me talking about what happens to you as you get older.

Well, kiddo, I want you to think of what I am telling you as a sort of Public Service Announcement. Yeah, that’s it a PSA.

We used to get these so-called PSA’s in a variety of ways, didn’t we?

We found them in newspapers, but no one gets a newspaper any longer so that method is of no use to us.

I don’t have a clue as to what people listen to on the radio these days, I suppose we still have radio, but I stopped listening years ago so can’t comment upon this form of media.

Television is out since Hulu, Amazon and Netflix doesn’t have commercials.

That leaves, Facebook, Twitter and whatever, none of which are going to help me.

So, stick with me here and I hope to tell you a few things to educate you on what happens when parts of your body ages faster than your brain.

Without going into too much medical detail, I would like to confine this weeks PSA to a discussion about the “Aging of skin.”

What this basically boils down to is that your skin has decided to die some years before the rest of your body does. The skin, being the largest organ in your body has probably had it and then decides on its own to just quit. No more, no mas….not going to even try and keep up, you just have to learn to deal with it.

Your skin has been putting on a show for God knows how many years. All those smiles at silly dumb jokes from your brother-in-law or the boss you hated for 10 years. ….all those laugh lines, all that weight gained and then weight lost. It seems the person inside of this meat sack can’t ever seem to be satisfied with how the skin looks, or even cares. Fickle, fickle, fickle.

Faces, legs and arms shaved, too much sun, too little sun, too much water, too little moisture.

It’s a wonder the skin didn’t quit when we were about 30 years old instead of waiting so long to fail us. The skin cells probably thought that we would eventually come to our senses and just leave well enough alone.

But no, not us. We spend untold dollars upon every kind of lotion, soap and cream we can find to somehow magically convince the skin that we are 25 years old once more.

The skin is fooled for just so long and has now said simply …’enough is enough.’

So how do we start to see the visible signs of skin suicide?

Liver spots, skin tags, moles, warts…just  to name a few…

Look at your hands, how and where did these brown spots come from overnight? What does my liver have to do with this anyway? I don’t like these at all.

Barnacles…..let’s talk about barnacles….

No, not the kind you get on the bottom of your boat. These are weird little globs of stuff that pop up at night on every part of your body you can think of. It wasn’t there yesterday and here it is today. They are kind of waxy and sometimes you can hit them just right and they fall off, kind of like some sort of leech.

Other times, you can go to the doctor and he or she can burn, cut and perhaps freeze or blow torch them off and they manage to survive and reappear after 2 or 3 days.

Going to the skin doctor is always a treat as well. Most of them are young, just out of med school and they look at you with wonder as they think of you as a living specimen of the cadaver, they were cutting up a few months ago.—“Look, Jennifer , this one is actually alive!!!”

You are a living, breathing project to be used for discovery.

It is not uncommon for a doctor looking at you to discover something he or she has never seen before on a living person and goes out into the hall and asks for others to come into the room.

“Hey, everybody come on in and just take a look at this”. Then they all crowd around you and shake their heads and make funny moist sounds that are not able to be identified. No one says one word that you can understand which might give you hope that you will make it through Christmas. No one wants ever wants to die at Christmas. Or Labor Day as well.

The doctors lead you to believe they have found something totally bizarre and very deadly. You await to hear the announcement that you only have months, possibly days left to live. You are silently planning your funeral and what songs you would like to be sung. “Where did I put my will? “goes through your mind.

But, then he/she joyfully explains that it is just a new form of heat rash or fungus that they seldom see at this time of the year.

“Here, take this pill, rub this cream onto the affected area, twice daily and come back in six months.”

Maybe, maybe not. It depends upon the wishes of my skin….

I wonder if my skin believes me when I pledge to treat it better in the future?

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Have a good week…see you next week…keep smiling and be good to yourself.

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