Don’t Y’all Even THINK About Going Out in the Sun. I Mean It!

Get back in there and put on a hat. Some sunglasses. A long-sleeved shirt.  Maybe a jacket. And take your parasol. You heard me!
So the report on the latest skin biopsies was good news. And also weird news. No more melanoma going on, which is Excellent News, indeed.
But one of the little things on my leg turned out to be pre-cancerous for squamous cell carcinoma, the second-most common skin cancer (basal cell is most common, and so far I seem to have missed that one. Not that I’m feeling left out or anything! No! Two out of three is plenty, thank you.)
Once again, we removed it early, it’s gone, everything’s hunky dory.  Copacetic. 
But here’s a thought:  what would you imagine is a really good way to drive someone with, oh, say, anal-retentive tendencies and maybe the tiniest bit of OCD completely fucking nuts? Wanna guess? You know, just in case you know someone like that and find them to be, oh, maybe a total pain in the butt, with all their rigidity and checking and general tight-assed-ness about everything from their computer files to the way they tie their shoelaces.
You tell them, Oh, hey, this is great:  you caught these things early!  Good job! Now you just have to be reallyreallyreally vigilant for the Rest of Your Life! Check every inch of your skin every single month! Note any changes, any oddities! Keep track of everything! Don’t miss anything!
I don’t know about you people, esp. You Young Whippersnappers who have not yet reached Middle Age, but me? My skin is a veritable Collection of Dermatological Circus Freaks and is changing faster than a chameleon in a kaleidoscope. Bumps, wrinkles, lines, spots—you name it, it’s there.
Oy. Do you know that now they’ve added a new visual test for identifying melanomas? In the past, it was the ABCDE test:  you checked for Asymmetry, Borders (poorly defined), Color (not a uniform color), Diameter (bigger than a pencil eraser—some number of millimeters I can’t ever remember—2, maybe?), and Evolving, (something that’s changing).
Now they’ve added The Ugly Duckling Sign, having found that melanomas don’t always follow the rules, above, and sometimes just look different from the other moles around them. Contrary little shits, refusing to go along.
[Sorry:  I find the word “mole” disgusting, too. But we have to talk about this.]
So you have the ABCDE test, and the Ugly Duckling Test, and the itching or bleeding test. Scaliness. Rough patches. Raised edges. Go here to find out all you need to know, with links to photos.
Pretty much anything on your skin can be Something To Watch. So you tell someone with OCD that—that they have to watch their skin closely for all these varied things, and you tell them all the possibilities. And then you sit back and watch the fun!
Only:  it’s not really bothering me. Oh, sure—it’s no fun to hear that there’s yet another kind of skin cancer I need to watch out for. And there are all these scars on my legs that I see every day when I shave (because of course I shave my legs Every Single Day and have done so since I was 11. But you knew that already.)
But it doesn’t freak me out. I think about what it would have been like 20 years ago, when this stuff would have driven me crazy. Part of it’s that I’ve mellowed A Lot. I mean a WHOLE lot. Part of it is that I’m older. I’ve lost both parents. I’m learning, slowly, to come to terms with the fact that I’m going to die (and coming to terms with that fact is, for an atheist, a whole nother thang, let me tell you. We don’t have a lot of wiggle room, seeing as how we can’t count on heaven or hell or reincarnation or floating for eternity in the glow of the ether or being beamed up by space aliens. Try meditating on the idea that at some point everything will just end. Permanently. Not a lot of laughs there, but I’m working on it).
So, anyway:  not freaked out, but really frustrated that the information about sun exposure and skin cancer are not meaning anything to most people. I don’t know about where you live, but here in West Texas, short shorts and a good tan are the requirements for summer, if you’re a) white and 2) a girl. And, oh, honeys, I had both. I had a tan every single year of my life until I was over 45 (the tattoos were the reason I quit:  I spent too much time and money getting them to ruin them with sun).
[We won’t talk about the shorts. The EGE found a pair of them in storage and just shook his head sadly.]
But I see all these people with tans and sunburns and hardly any clothes to speak of, all standing out in the sun, and I know they’ve heard the warnings, and I know they’re no more likely to heed them than I was.
The good news for them is that most skin cancers won’t kill you.
The bad news is that some of them will.
So. Go buy some sunscreen. Find a nice, cool, long-sleeved white shirt (yes:  I actually own a white shirt. Linen, and—of course--from a garage sale.) Dig out your umbrella and call it a parasol.
This is mine:  isn’t it fabulous?
When you twirl it, it goes through the whole rainbow. So get you one of those ($19.99 at Target) and use it, and don’t be foolish about the sun, and you’ll be safe. Pale and pasty, maybe, but that’s OK.
And don’t think this is only for You White People. It’s for You Thank-God-I’m Not Pasty People, too. I had The EGE have his GP check a mole on his back—it was irregular and scaly—and she had him go have it removed. Better to be safe. And being Not White does not mean you don’t need to
--check your skin
--stay out of the sun
Go. Twirl that parasol.
Damn it:  anyone want to make up A Parasol Song? ‘Coz I’ve got the tune to “Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You!” going on in my head.
Want me to come to your office and sing it to you?
I thought not.