The Sun and Skin Cancer

Don't turn yourself into "bacon" by too much sun.

As a teenager I spent entirely too much time in the sun, and those were the days before sunscreen.  We would lather ourselves in baby oil that had been browned with a few drops of iodine.  With my fair skin and freckles, I tried in vain to get a really good tan.  More freckles--but no tan.  And then I spent an entire summer working in tropical Africa under the hot sun-- no hat and no sunscreen..  Now I am paying the price. 

Five biopsies of suspicious lesions.

Yesterday I had biopsies of five very small suspicious lesion.  Over the last ten years I have had a number of squamous cell skin cancers (but no melanomas) that have been treated successfully with Mohs surgery.  I have an excellent doctor, Dr. Rob Clark, at the Cary Skin Center and I go in regularly for a skin check.  I suspect that some of these biopsies will require Mohs surgery.

Now I avoid the sun as much as possible, and when outdoors I wear my Tilley hat and I use sunscreen EVERY day.  

In the sun wearing my Tilley hat sailing with David Campbell in Cape Breton.

Don't get baked like a "turkey".  Wear sunscreen.

I couldn't resist getting copies of these two cartoons that were posted as I checked out of the Cary Skin Center.