- Joined
- Dec 7, 2016
- Messages
- 4,610
- Reaction score
- 7,031
Over the last four years I've had a mess of small, pre-cancerous lesions frozen off or burned off and have also had a couple of rather extensive squamous celled cancer cuts. After the last cut I was told that the nature of these spots can change quickly and today I am just getting accustomed to how much truth there is in that. I was at Mayo Clinic from 7 this morning until 3:30 this afternoon having a melanoma cancer cut from my face, the same general area of at least one of the other major cuts. Instead of running from the outside corner of the eye to the corner of my mouth this cut runs from right under the center of the eye to the jaw line and was a fairly deep excision. Closing the wound took over 2 hours.
Use sunscreen people if you're going to be out side and exposed to the sun's uv rays. Nasty, nasty stuff. It knows no color boundaries or tanning traits or the difference between man, woman or child. Certainly the fair skinned are the most probable candidates for landing this crap, but the docs told me today that more and more young people....well under 25 years of age....are being treated for skin cancers of one type or another, but the melanoma is one that is on the rise. The good doctors told me that while a sunscreen of spf 30 was considered adequate for years an spf of 50 is today's standard and that re-application every 4 hours is now replaced with the recommendation of every 90 minutes regardless of exposure to water or sweating.
Like myself there are many here on this site that are retired and well into the late 60's and 70's. Its too late really for us to do much to prevent this skin cancer stuff as the exposure that will plague us was made many, many years ago. But for the sake of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, find out what you can do to protect them from the sun's energy. I know I don't want any of my grandchildren to go thru what I have over the last couple years with today's cut being the most extensive and miserable of any of them.
Read up on these cancers and stay mindful of spots that just show up on a face or hand or upper arm, maybe a leg. All of my prior cancers were squamous celled, however it was a tiny spot that just appeared that prompted today's surgery. It was diagnosed as a melanoma when the spot was removed and went to pathology in July and hardly left a scar. Today's incision was over 4" in length and as wide as a quarter right where that tiny scar was. That's how aggressive they go after melanoma. That small spot on the surface can cover a lot of area UNDER the skin and the devious part of melanoma is that if left unchecked its more than happy to spread to major organs and many other parts of one's body. Man....if I knew 50 years ago what I know today about this stuff, I'd have lived a whole lot different.
Use sunscreen people if you're going to be out side and exposed to the sun's uv rays. Nasty, nasty stuff. It knows no color boundaries or tanning traits or the difference between man, woman or child. Certainly the fair skinned are the most probable candidates for landing this crap, but the docs told me today that more and more young people....well under 25 years of age....are being treated for skin cancers of one type or another, but the melanoma is one that is on the rise. The good doctors told me that while a sunscreen of spf 30 was considered adequate for years an spf of 50 is today's standard and that re-application every 4 hours is now replaced with the recommendation of every 90 minutes regardless of exposure to water or sweating.
Like myself there are many here on this site that are retired and well into the late 60's and 70's. Its too late really for us to do much to prevent this skin cancer stuff as the exposure that will plague us was made many, many years ago. But for the sake of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, find out what you can do to protect them from the sun's energy. I know I don't want any of my grandchildren to go thru what I have over the last couple years with today's cut being the most extensive and miserable of any of them.
Read up on these cancers and stay mindful of spots that just show up on a face or hand or upper arm, maybe a leg. All of my prior cancers were squamous celled, however it was a tiny spot that just appeared that prompted today's surgery. It was diagnosed as a melanoma when the spot was removed and went to pathology in July and hardly left a scar. Today's incision was over 4" in length and as wide as a quarter right where that tiny scar was. That's how aggressive they go after melanoma. That small spot on the surface can cover a lot of area UNDER the skin and the devious part of melanoma is that if left unchecked its more than happy to spread to major organs and many other parts of one's body. Man....if I knew 50 years ago what I know today about this stuff, I'd have lived a whole lot different.