SPF

About 4 years ago I went through probably the most scary few days of my life. I went to the doctor, and she told me that I had 3 suspicious moles on my back. Everyone knows that I have a billion moles, but I never really thought that they were dangerous. She immediately removed them for biopsies and tried to remain calm but she seemed..nervous. Everything happened so fast, and the paper that went off to the lab with my moles read "Melanoma suspected."

MELANOMA? Skin cancer? Suspected? I was left with painful wounds (luckily my mom was there to help me change the bandaging every day, even that was painful) and this sense of tremendous fear that I had a deadly disease. Not to mention I had to stop working as a swim instructor just a few days before the session was over. I did so much research and found a lot of good stories about surviving and everything going fine, but I also found a lot of tragic stories about young people dying because they hadn't caught it early enough, and it had spread to their vital organs.

Who knew if I had caught it early enough? What if I was going to die from this in a few years or even less?

I was terrified. Here is an entry I wrote in my journal:

(First some background, in the entry prior I had said I wanted bigger boobs and a really expensive camera)

"6/13/07

So, I'm changing what I want. I want to NOT have melanoma. But since I most likely do, I want desperately to be in stage 0. That would be just fabulous.

CANCER SUCKS!

This is so unfair. I am NEVER EVER tanning again. EVER. Fake tans for me.

God, please let it be in stage 0. Or maybe even stage 1, but preferably stage 0. That would be great.

I have to wait 10-12 f***ing days for the biopsy results. I'm gonna go crazy. I'm losing my mind. Please dear God don't let me do chemotherapy or radiation. I just wanna live and graduate and go to college. Oh so badly. I'm not ready for this. At all.

How can this be happening? This was supposed to be the best summer ever. It's quickly seeming like one of the worst. And there have been some pretty bad ones.

I'm so scared. I'm trying so hard to be optimistic. But it's so hard to be optimistic when the word "cancer" keeps ringing in my head. It's such an ugly word. Ew."

(I went on for a while longer repeating how scared I was and how unfair it was.. you get the idea.)

Those days waiting to hear the results were the most torturous of my life. I felt so many emotions all the time and I didn't know what to do with them all. I remember being out in the backyard with my mom and I sat down in a chair and the chair broke because it was an old flimsy chair and I just burst into tears uncontrollably. Not because I broke the chair but because I felt broken myself.

I was very fortunate, because that was the worst of it.

"6/20/07

YAY!! I don't have cancer. Thank the Lord. I'm so happy. And I feel so loved. Everyone is so relieved. And Chris called and told me that Mom called him and told him and that he was happy and relieved. He's so sweet.

I can't stop crying. But this time they're happy tears.

I was so scared that I was gonna have melanoma and that I'd have to go through all this stuff and that I might die. And I am so NOT ready to die. Not even a little bit.

This whole scary experience just made me more aware of how much I value my life. And how I need to be really careful about the sun. BUT I AM JUST SO F***ING HAPPY! :)

Happy to be alive. Just like my girl Sydney. Every day she wakes up and prances around like a puppy. She's just happy to be alive.

I finally stopped crying."

Basically, that experience is why I'm so pale. I used to be tan all the time because I was always out in the sun (swim team, soccer, swim lesson teaching.. just the love of the outdoors) and did not wear sunblock as much as I should have. But now the scars on my back remind me of what I went through because of it, and I know it could have been a lot worse. I am much more careful about the sun now.

However, as the years passed since then I seem to have gotten complacent. I went to Catalina a few weeks ago, and of course I wore sunblock. But I was out in the sun for extended periods of time and didn't reapply as I should have, and I ended up with a sunburn. Now I have a nice tan (at least, for me) but also damage to my skin that I can't afford. My brother reminded me that I really need to be careful with this video, and it's so true. We all need to be careful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4jgUcxMezM

Postscript. An old blog that I'm finally posting. Cheers.