With the summer heat upon us this piece by Agmate John Mikkelsen [pictured] is a timely reminder to us all:
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THIS is one column I’ve put off writing for a long time, mainly because it’s personal, it’s not even mildly amusing… but it might just help save your life.
It’s a topic most of us living in tropical Queensland would probably rather forget.
That’s how I dealt with it most of my life, living for the moment and enjoying all the outdoor activities and beaches our great State has to offer.
When I was young, I was invincible. Sound familiar?
As a kid, I swam in flooded creeks and rode logs or homemade canoes down the rapids.
One day I almost drowned, pushed down and held under by a mass of swirling, dark water. But I managed to grasp the roots of a huge tree growing on the bank and pulled myself back to the surface, lungs almost bursting.
A word of advice to today’s kids – don’t try that, you probably won’t be so lucky.
As a young adult, I surfed and spear-fished over much of Australia’s east coast, sometimes hunting down an elusive prey that sought refuge among a school of sharks, without much thought for my own safety. Once, off Round Hill head, I swam out to a partly submerged rock where a novice diver mate clung as a school of bronze whalers patrolled in a close circle.
We made it back to shore intact. I always did.
Crazy? Maybe, but I didn’t realise then that a more sinister danger was lurking – not below the surface, but in the blue sky above. And back then, we were told a tan was healthy.
Now we’ve heard it all before. Queensland has among the world’s worst skin cancer rates.
However, if you’re young, that’s not likely to worry you too much. You’re indestructible, and the time to worry about that stuff is when you’re old, or at least middle aged, right?
Wrong. Back when I was in my forties and occupying the Observer editor’s desk, I remember writing an editorial about a young melanoma victim who bravely spoke a warning to other kids before she died, aged about 14 or 15.
Cassie paid the ultimate price in promoting the Slip, Slop, Slap message.
I should have listened to what she said, and what I wrote. But again, I was pretty lucky I guess. I didn’t personally encounter a melanoma until just a couple of years ago.
Now I can speak from experience when I say that avoidance where possible is a far better option.
The skin scan check had picked up a total of eight suspect moles marked for excisions, each a week apart. First cab off the rank turned out to be the dreaded M word and there were still seven more excisions and seven more weeks to wait for results from that lot.
Russian roulette? At least that’s over quickly with just six spins maximum.
But apart from ending up with more battle nicks than my Norse Viking ancestors who gave me their bloody skin genes (great for conquests around the foggy North Sea, not so great for the tropics), I got over that lot without too much drama.
Then full skin scans every three months were on the agenda. About 12 months later they found another one.
Let me make this clear – it could save your life:
A melanoma does NOT have to look anything like those ugly, festering, hideous things you see in the brochures and the TV ads.
Mine didn’t. They looked like innocuous small, flat moles or freckles with an irregular shape. Early detection is very important. They rate them on depth rather than size and on a scale of one to four (the worst) this little thing on my chest not much bigger than a match head was already a level 3.
So now I get two spins of the revolver every three months – with my local skin clinic scan followed by a visit to a dermatologist on the Sunshine Coast.
Other than that, life is pretty good, I still enjoy the beach and the (Tannum) surf??? But now I’ve finally learned to swim or fish more in the late afternoons or early mornings and every year, every day, is a good one.
Hang on, isn’t that when I’m most likely to run into a bull shark or some other beastie? Bugger, but who wants to be 90 anyway? (I guess most 89 year olds have their hands raised).
Meanwhile, Happy New Year, stay alive and keep Slip, Slop, Slapping.
END
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Tags: John Mikkelson, Melanoma, Skin Cancer, Slip Slop Slap