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Tan At Risk
Mar. 15th, 2005 11:50 amSo this post is not fannish or even funny or even funny in a fannish kind of way.
A friend of mine underwent surgery today to remove a melanoma from her neck. She is twenty-seven years old and has not tanned or spent any significant time unprotected in the sun since she was a teenager. She was just lucky that her doctor saw the mole (it looked like a large freckle) at a check-up last week and referred her immediately to a dermatologist who biopsied it and the results came back Friday. Well as lucky as one can feel when they are 27 and have cancer.
So - they will remove that area of her skin - and about three centimeters from the diameter of the lesion. There will be a scar and it will be in a visable place but she probably won't need radiation or additional treatment beyond complete body checks and additional monitoring of any suspicious places, because they caught it early. When I say early - I am talking in weeks here. A matter of weeks made the difference.
Now, I am posting this here because if you are like me - chances are you suffered some significant sunburns in your youth, but you are extra careful now. Wonderful - but you need to make certain you are having regular skin checks - you are at risk. Maybe you wear sunscreen now and use fake tanning products, but you used to go to the tanning bed when you were in high school because we all do stupid things when we are teenagers. I hear ya and I was ya - and fine - you are at risk.
I really didn't give cancer or aging or any of this any thought at all when I was sixteen. I did some really terrible things to my skin as a result. A lot of us who are over thirty never wore sunscreen (or limited amounts) when we were kids and we burned. This is not good. Hell, some of us would lay out slathered in baby oil with reflectors and this was to achieve "healthy tans" and it wasn't healthy and we need to be vigilant now.
Just a reminder and thus ends my preaching for today.
A friend of mine underwent surgery today to remove a melanoma from her neck. She is twenty-seven years old and has not tanned or spent any significant time unprotected in the sun since she was a teenager. She was just lucky that her doctor saw the mole (it looked like a large freckle) at a check-up last week and referred her immediately to a dermatologist who biopsied it and the results came back Friday. Well as lucky as one can feel when they are 27 and have cancer.
So - they will remove that area of her skin - and about three centimeters from the diameter of the lesion. There will be a scar and it will be in a visable place but she probably won't need radiation or additional treatment beyond complete body checks and additional monitoring of any suspicious places, because they caught it early. When I say early - I am talking in weeks here. A matter of weeks made the difference.
Now, I am posting this here because if you are like me - chances are you suffered some significant sunburns in your youth, but you are extra careful now. Wonderful - but you need to make certain you are having regular skin checks - you are at risk. Maybe you wear sunscreen now and use fake tanning products, but you used to go to the tanning bed when you were in high school because we all do stupid things when we are teenagers. I hear ya and I was ya - and fine - you are at risk.
I really didn't give cancer or aging or any of this any thought at all when I was sixteen. I did some really terrible things to my skin as a result. A lot of us who are over thirty never wore sunscreen (or limited amounts) when we were kids and we burned. This is not good. Hell, some of us would lay out slathered in baby oil with reflectors and this was to achieve "healthy tans" and it wasn't healthy and we need to be vigilant now.
Just a reminder and thus ends my preaching for today.
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