to TAn or nOT

Sorry to rain on your parade, but skin cancer looks a lot worse than white flesh. I know folks who've had several lesions removed. It's not pretty and, untreated, it can kill you.

Sorry not to be positive about this, but use sunscreen, please. I care about you!

Not deliberately, but if I do get a bit of a tan just from being outside, then so be it. The thought of spending several hours sitting on a beach and attempting to change my skin color is about as exciting as a free hot dog.

so, no tan !

Not for me Al, tho each to his own needs and desires

I try to get to the pool a few times a week. It is impossible during the middle of the day. When I sit on a lounge chair to dry off, I feel par boiled in about 15 minutes. I like to go around 3 PM when the uv index is lower.

Nevertheless, I am quite a few shades darker than I was at the Florida gathering!

USE SUNSCREEN!!!!!

Rae- I am incorrigible. I hate the stuff!

You and me both, Miss Phoenix! (smooches, by the way!)

I ruined my entire weekend by laying out (for the first time in a year) Friday afternoon. Ninety minutes ~ that's all. And I was fried crisp.

The itching and peeling have set in ~ nevermind the damage I've done to my skin......

The amount of melanin you have makes a small difference, too. If you're alabaster, you need to worry more than if you're olive. (I'm olive, and get a definite greeny tone if I'm not in the sun enough.) Also, you get Vitamin D from the sun, which is important for a lot of things:

http://www.tomigion.com/phpshop/sun_tip6.html

Excerpt:



There are supplements, too, though.

Moderation, as with all things.

I try to stay covered up when I'm outside, and there's any threat of sun. Big hat, sunglasses, long-sleeved white shirt etc.

Too many friends have had skin cancers. Now my next-door neighbour is dying as a result of skin cancer that went bad. It's gone to Rosario's bones. They've given him 6 months to 2 years - if the treatment works.

Sorry to hear about Rosario, ehBeth. Hopefully, recovery is in his future. I know I'll keep him in my thoughts and prayers.

My ex is a red-head and has spent more than twenty-five of his forty-eight years in the ocean, on a surfboard.

He visits the skin doctor twice a year to have 'bad spots' burned off. All of these 'spots' come from his past.....He doesn't leave the house now without sunscreen ~ even if it's just to the grocery store.

When he was first diagnosed with 'skin cancer', it scared the life out of him. Even though he knows none of his spots have been 'cancer', he still goes to great lengths to protect himself.

Except for this past Friday (where I burnt to a crisp), I will never leave the house without sunscreen

I'm rambling again.....Why didn't anyone stop me?

Bottom-line.....

Work sucked today. Big time.

Rae, as long as i've lived here (about 7 years), Rosario has been going in to have minor lesions removed. They biopsied them all. Some were cancerous, some not.

It makes me crazy to see his sons go and out work all day in the sun, without protection from the sun. You'd think that with their dad's condition (he won't be recovering ), they would take this more seriously. The oldest son, who is doing a lot of caregiving, knows how horrible things are for his dad, but he's still out there, getting browner and browner.

ehBeth ~ thankfully, my son was old enough to understand after my ex was diagnosed.

Dougy is a natural red-head and never, ever leaves the house without sunscreen. (He's sees his Dad struggling through his treatments every year and he doesn't want any part of it.)

Sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen.....I can't impress it enough!

I will still keep Rosario in my thoughts.

Thank you, Rae. I know a prayer to keep Rosario comfortable would be appreciated.

Done deal.

If I'm without a tan, I burn easily.
But once tanned, it's difficult for me to burn.

With sunscreen I always miss some part, so it's easy to spend the whole
summer with a small patch of sunburn constantly moving from place to place,
wherever I was too clumsy that day!

To prevent this whack-a-mole lotion application,
I get a tan first all over slowly, using SPF-6 so I won't burn.
Once tan then I use sunscreen every day, but only SPF-10 or 12 so I
won't be completely cut off from the sun.

Direct UV light degrades any skin, but severe burning is far worse!
Once in a while I forget, and I'd rather not end up painfully in bed
for a couple days.

Um, in my teens and early twenties I, with friends, used to go to neat beaches to sun....back then we just used lotions..sigh. Luckily for me, a sickly looking alabaster person, who adored being slightly tan, I worked and schooled and did a lot of other stuff a whole lot, thus by default pulling away from sunbaking. Gradually I have gotten so interested in other things I can't imagine purposely just sitting there baking myself.

I don't think sunscreens are perfect, have read some stuff against them, but still have been cautioned to wear them by dermatologists, just for everyday lotion use, never mind purposefully baking.

So, now that I am older, and have friends that either were in the sun a whole lot, or smoked a whole lot, or both, faces have changed to roadmaps. Mostly I like our roadmap faces, character, you know, and find facial changes piquant, unboring, ..but the news is a lot of older people look about forty years younger once they take their shirts off. Or whatever. This is interesting in itself...

Weather, as it were, tends to be more socially acceptable for the male face, in terms of attractiveness to the opposite or same, or similar, sex.

i'm cutting back, really I am....