Consequences

About six or seven weeks ago, an ugly red bump popped up on my right shin, and it has been hurting, burning and itching. Yesterday I finally saw a dermatologist. He said it looked like a squamous cell carcinoma, but to be sure he would need to send it to pathology. After injecting the area with lidocaine, he sliced it off in a flash and had it sent away.

I asked him what caused the skin cancer. "It's from the sun you got when you were fifteen."

"Fifteen? How did you know?" How could he look into my past like that?

I thought back to the summer I turned fifteen. I was gorgeous! I spent the hot lazy days lying on the webbed "chaise lounge" in the back yard until my smooth young skin was perfectly bronzed, helped only by a little bit of wonderful smelling, oily Coppertone. A compliment on my beautiful tan was the reward for my long hours of basting and roasting.

I don't remember getting any dire warnings about the evils of sun or how it caused cancers, and I certainly never considered that someday I would be a seventy-something year old with wrinkles and splotches and scary looking things on my skin. I just wanted to look good at that moment in time.

Am I sorry I didn't stay out of the sun? Looking back on it, I really enjoyed that fifteenth summer and my tan, but apparently I am now paying a delayed price. I hope I don't get any more, though.