Skin Check

Do you check your skin for suspicious moles?  Have you checked your skin for suspicious moles?
On your arms, your back, your face, your legs? 

Did you know:

• Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States.  More than 3.5 million skin cancers in over two million people are diagnosed annually.
• Each year, there are more new cases of skin cancer than the combined incidence of cancers of the breast, prostate, lung and colon.
• One in five Americans will develop skin cancer in the course of a lifetime.

(Source: http://www.skincancer.org/)

Skin cancer can grow not only on the areas that you expose to sunlight, but also to areas that never see the light of day.

All of my life I've had three really big freckles.  One on each arm, and one on my behind.  I've always freckled very easily, so now I tend to stay out of the sun.  I didn't do so well with that when I was younger.  Remember the 80's?  Remember slathering yourself in baby oil to get a good tan?  Remember going out to lay out in the sun and get a really good burn to begin the season?  While I never used the baby oil, I did get several "good burns" through my teenage years.  None were intentional, but I had friends who did it on purpose every spring.

For the last 15 years, I've kept a very close eye on the freckles.  I don't get out in the sun as often as I used to, and I do apply a moisturizer that contains sunscreen daily.

I had one mole and one of the big freckles cut off five years ago.

I went back to see my dermatologist earlier this week.  She took a look, and off came the second of the big freckles, and another "thing" on my head.

Everything will be sent off to the lab for analysis, and I'll get the results later this week.

The actual removal process isn't horrible.  The doctor gives you several small shots of pain killer around the area that they will be removing.  I don't actually watch them take things out... I did see an X-acto knife.  (okay, a scalpel).  The doctor dug wide around the freckle in order to get out any cells that might be cancerous, and she dug deep, to get at the root.  She dumped it into a container to send it off to the lab.  I didn't feel a thing until after the pain killers wore off!

All in all, I'm glad that those spots are gone.  Skin Cancer is deadly, and it kills people every year.  But, if it's caught early, it is treatable. 

I'm hoping that it isn't cancer.  If it is, I'm hoping that it was caught early enough.

What I'm finding as I get older, is that staying healthy is a matter of vigilance.  I need to take my own health in my own hands, and be vigilant.  Mammograms, skin cancer screenings, colonoscopies, losing weight, eating right... it's all about vigilance.

Because we all know that we're going to die.  But what if something horrible happens and we don't die? 

I really want the quality of my last years on this earth to be as amazing as the rest of my life.

Have you checked your skin lately?