SKIN CANCER - A personal experience with Jimmy Bee

WARNING----This could happen to you....Prevention is always better than the cure.

Scary, ain't it!

It all started with two little spots, one on my left ear and the other on my nose. Over time, they started to continually bleed, not heal and were itchy most of the time. Well,  that's not exactly right, the doctor wrote me a script for some ointment which made them disappear  but they would always reappear some months later and it wasn't until I had a biopsy performed that I learnt that they were BCC (Basal cell carcinoma)http://www.skincancer.gov.au/internet/skincancer/publishing.nsf/Content/fact-bcc

 

I was lucky, the outcome could have been much worse. This is not unusual for people of my generation who grew up in Australia and worshipped the sun, sand and surf. Back in the 60's, it was the norm when going to the beach, to have your body sprayed with suntan oil......rather like basting a chicken for Sunday lunch and then to spend hours surfing or lying on the beach. The paradox of the whole thing was that people were young, fit and worshipped the body rather than worry about the consequences in later life and the darker the tan the more attractive we thought our bodies were. It was quite common to hear "Wow! love your tan" and "Live fast, die young while you still have a good looking corpse". In hindsight ......Bloody madness.....or was it just youthful ambivalence.

 

 

 

Tempting isn't it?

 

Like alcohol, the sun can be a great slave but a lousy master. It's quite ironical really, to witness the mums dressing the kids from top to toe, applying copious amounts of sunscreen lotion, making them wear hats when they are out in the sun and then to see a little later on, the same bodies, a little older sprawled all over the beach on the hottest days of the year with suntans rivalling anything we could produce in the wild 60's. Madness or is it just life as we know it in Australia.

Bondi beach taken in winter

 

This is where it all started. Although I grew up in the country, our family alternated between Bondi Beach and Manly Beach for our annual holidays and then when I was in my early 20's, I lived in the eastern suburbs of Sydney and for a period of 6 years, lived in Bondi and I spent many hours on the famous Bondi beach. It is hard to imagine this beach from the above photograph being so crowded on a weekend in summer that there is barely a space in between bodies. No wonder Australia has one of the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world http://www.skincancer.gov.au/internet/skincancer/publishing.nsf/Content/fact-2.

 

Well, enough of the lecturing, I think you get the picture.

 

Cheers and safe riding


Jimmy Bee