“What’s this?” My dermatologist pointed to a bronzed arm. I was sixteen.
“Uh, my shoulder?”
“No, it’s a tan line and you know how I feel about tans.”
Dr. Crutcher hated tans.
“Look doc, I don’t want your beef. Just gimme my zit meds and let me get the hell outta here. I’m losing precious pool time.”
At sixteen, being tan was the only way to be in a bikini. And it was the only way to actually make your thighs look thinner and your skin clearer in one afternoon. Tanning rocked.
“I am withholding your erythromycin until you start using sunscreen.”
“Damnit, doc.” I looked down at my golden legs dangling over the side of the examination table. He had me between a rock and a pimply place. I relented.
“Fine, gimme a bag of those SPF samples and make ‘em 30.”
I begrudgingly started using them, but only on my face. I was not about to lose all my hard work just because some dough-faced doctor told to me to.
Until Dr. Crutcher—like moms across the world—turned out to be right.
I was eighteen and in for a routine check-up.
“That mole on your ankle, it looks suspicious. You’re going under the knife.”
It was a simple procedure and I thought I was done. Then the pathology report came back.
“We’re going in for more tissue. That mole turned out to have abnormal cellular changes.”
When I returned, a different surgeon cut me up. There was a sale on SPF 50 sunscreen, so Dr. Crutcher was out renting a U-Haul.
“I sewed up thousands in ’Nam,” said the friendly replacement. “So I know what I’m doing. There will barely be a scar.”
He, too, was right. There is barely a mark on my ankle, but the incision, in addition to the pamphlets in the waiting room showing what my skin could have looked like had my pathology report showed malignancy, made a lasting impression. I finally realized what Dr. Crutcher had known since day one: I am a walking risk factor for skin cancer. Light skin, light eyes, plenty of burns as a teen, and a plethora of moles.
My family history isn’t great either. My mom had basal cell carcinoma on her nose and my dad has had plenty of “suspicious” growths removed from his body. Even our cat Mitch had a skin malignancy; at the end of his life, I watched his nose go the way of Michael Jackson’s (i.e., it disintegrated).
After mole number one was removed, I started to realize that no matter how good I thought I looked with a tan and how pasty I thought looked without, the sun was something to be protected against. Besides wrinkles, age spots, and a generally withered appearance, ultraviolet radiation from the sun causes over one million cases of skin cancer a year, making it the leading cause of cancer in the United States.
But skin cancer, though widely prevalent, is a rare killer. Basal and squamous cell carcinoma, which account for about 95 percent of all skin cancers, can be easily removed if found early and do not usually spread to other parts of the body. Melanoma, on the other hand, is less common but can spread to other organs and be fatal. However, even melanoma can be “100 percent curable,” according to the Skin Cancer Foundation, if it is recognized and treated early. The best way to prevent all forms of skin cancer is early detection and treatment.
Luckily, skin cancer is a lot easier to detect than other forms of cancer. It usually presents itself as visible lesions and abnormalities, begging for attention and removal. That’s why the American Academy of Dermatology recommends doing a skin self-exam every month or two, so you can become intimately acquainted with what’s going down on your epidermis. Since self-exams require you to strip down and inspect every inch of your body, they are also a good excuse to a) prance around naked in front of the mirror or b) prance around naked in front of someone else. How else are you going to see that mole on your left buttock?
