Sunscreen Wake-Up Call: My Battle with Skin Cancer and Why You Should Listen 🚨🌞
As a child in the 1960s and ‘70s, I recall friends using liquid Crisco oil or baby oil and iodine to get an orangey, sunkissed glow to their skin. While I never used Crisco, I recall the joy of laying on a towel on my warm cement backyard patio or on the grass in the backyard listening to Top 100 hits on my white AM radio slathered with baby oil, Hawaiian Tropic, or Coppertone, and when I was a little older with a bigger budget, Bain de Soleil, “for that St. Tropez tan.” 🎵🎶🎵🎶
My father served as an my personal timer during our escapes from the frigid Buffalo winters to balmy Florida and let me know when I needed to turn over, much like a hamburger crisping in a sizzling frying pan. I would slather myself in tanning oil to help attract the sun. It wasn’t a thing back then to be concerned with harmful UV rays. If sunscreen existed, I completely disregarded it. I remember returning from those vacations and having friends compare forearms. God forbid if I didn’t measure up to their expectations and have a deep golden tan.
Despite my olive skin, the sun wasn’t always kind to me. A few of those years I had sun poisoning and my eyelids swelled so much that I needed to wear sunglasses so that I wouldn’t frighten little children. Shortly after Kevin and I got married, we spent a day at the beach and didn’t bother with (re?)applying sunscreen because it was chilly and overcast. We sure regretted it afterward when we tried to go to the drive in and had to leave because we were shivering from sunburn and even a thin sheet while we slept was too painful for our beet-red skin. Even cool showers were painful.
Kevin’s fair Irish, translucent (!) skin freckles easily and he’s had a few incredibly painful altercations with severe sunburn over the years. He now religiously protects his skin with SPF 50 or higher, wears a hat in most circumstances in the sun, and regularly visits a dermatologist to have anything suspicious checked and biopsied.
I’d chosen to put my head in the sand because I didn’t know my genetic history towards skin cancer and didn’t think I needed to worry. It’s easy to think that bad things happen to other people. I’m Italian after all. Even if it’s far from the truth, a person with a tan appears rested and stress free, so I’ve actively avoided sunscreen for myself, even when I was smearing SPF 30+ on my kiddos all day long when we went to the beach or were at the pool.
So I was unconcerned when a translucent bump appeared next to my nose during the pandemic. It was fairly well hidden under my glasses and we really weren’t outdoors much—except when I was soaking in the sun at the park across the street as our only activity outside of our apartment. As life in public began to resume, I finally had it biopsied by a dermatologist, but I still wasn’t terribly worried when it came back as basal cell carcinoma.
I didn’t break a sweat when I was scheduled for Mohs Surgery to remove the cancer cells, but I did realize that my sun worshipping days were now likely over. What I wasn’t prepared for were the Frankenstein-like scars under my eye and down my nose to remove three layers of skin to get clear, cancer-free margins. It wasn’t a blast to have had a black eye for two weeks and deal with swelling and discoloration two months later. I have reconstruction and more treatments ahead as well. Would I have listened had I comprehended that removing cancer cells is serious business? I also have two similar but smaller patches that my dermatologist needs to check out after this gets resolved.Maybe all the worry warts were on to something. Not that I listened, but I wish someone told me—or I had listened more carefully—to the consequences of sun damage.
Basal cell carcinoma isn’t genetic, but if you have other family members with similar skin types, it probably means that the sun will impact them similarly. The differentiator is whether those people are protecting their skin properly by wearing a broad-spectrum SPF every day, regardless of whether they’re indoors where UV rays may be passing through glass windows or soaking in the sun oceanside. And when you’re outside, wear a hat, sunglasses, or seek shade when possible, because once you’ve had basal cell carcinoma, you are at risk for recurring issues in the same locations. So wear sunscreen and stay out of the sun.I’m fortunate that because while this type of skin cancer isn’t to be taken lightly, it is very treatable. However, more serious melanoma can become life threatening within six weeks and can spread to your lymph nodes, brain, bones, liver, or lungs. A double whammy is that melanoma can be found on areas of your body that aren’t normally exposed to the sun. A former colleague discovered a fairly aggressive form of melanoma on his scalp hidden in his thick hair, so make sure your dermatologist does a thorough full-body scan. He’s doing well thanks to some experimental treatment, but he got lucky.
When you know better, you do better. Friends help friends. If you know someone who has a suspicious looking mark or mole or new something or other on their skin, tell them to get thyself to a dermatologist PRONTO. And if it’s you, what are you still doing here reading? Make an appointment with your dermatologist TODAY.
