I, along with most physicians, are of the school of thought that growing soft tissue masses should be excised. Telling you to leave it alone is akin to not advising a patient to not stop smoking. By waiting until this mass became 8 cms. you have already turned a ten minute, in office procedure into an outpatient process. Why wait longer? The earlier you go in the smaller the scar and the simpler the procedure. Are there any advantages to temporizing. I think not. The textural changes on the skin and symptoms you describe are quite worrisome. Most lipomas do not cause those type of changes to the skin. The symptoms of muscle tightness you mention are most likely due to the mass intertwining and infiltrating into the muscle tissue. At the very least, this will make it more difficult for the surgeon to remove your probable lipoma. Not all soft tissue masses of the back, that feel like lipomas are indeed lipomas. You might have a hibernoma. These are benign, rare tumors usually occurring in the area between the scapulae. It is named for its resemblance to the bronw fat of hibernating glands of animals, hence its name. There are a number of varients to the simple lipoma including ones with fibrous tissue ( fibrolipoma); chondroid lipoma (cartilege like); myolipoma (muscle mixed in), spindle cell lipoma ( these are scary since they can look sarcomatous; and usually occurs in the shoulder region); pleomorphic lipoma (again a shoulder lesion;) and an angiolipoma (these are usually painful and more in the domain of us dermatoloigsts so we see these on occasion.). What I, and my colleagues who have answered this question, worry about is the chance of this being a well-differentiated liposarcoma. These almost feel benign, and on casual inspection by the pathologist look benign. They have the chicken coop appearance of most benign lipomas until you look carefully and see the cells look a little larger than they should. Also too numerous and a bit abnormal. This would be the tumor we would all be concerned about. I personally acted quite the opposite from you. My wife and I were watching St. Elsewhere one night and she asked me what's that lump on your shoulder. I said OMG, and within 30 minutes I was in the living room of a surgeon-friend. The next morning he was removing a rather gritty (not good) soft tissue mass. It was quite cellular. As a semi-pathologist I looked at the slides along with the hospital pathologist and it looked much more cellular than it should and there was even a mitosis or two (not good!). It was sent to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and they concluded it was benign. I just checked it now. Nothing there. So I suppose they were right (as usual). But again, I see no advantage to waiting and would get this taken care of. Ask your family physician to recommend a good surgeon and have it removed. It will be most likely be a big relief.