December 11, 2006: SAILORS' SKIN CANCERS
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

We were born lucky. We are not blond or red-headed. We both grew up in northern high latitudes. Neither of us has ever suffered more than superficial sunburns. Nevertheless we have each had small pre-cancerous skin lesions frozen off by our doctors from time to time. Here we are, well into our seventies, yet this potentially dangerous skin damage is relatively new to us. Our lifestyle has been for years such an exposed one - in the cockpit, on deck, in and out of dinghies, motorcycle riding, rowing, sailing, swimming, snorkeling. But now that we spend our time in ozone-depleted areas where the melanoma rates are higher than anywhere else in the world we have become more careful.

This year we were told that the hole in the protective ozone layer over the southern hemisphere was as large as the whole of North America. Media hype or for real? We fear the latter. The sun even feels fiercer here than elsewhere. The newspapers print the UV Index each day. We are warned to seek shade between 11 and 4 o'clock. Several of our friends and acquaintances have suffered from oddball melanomas. One has had surgery on her lips. Another on her arm and under arm lymph nodes. Another has lost half a foot after a misdiagnosed and neglected melanoma was discovered on the sole of his foot. Sunbathing lying on his stomach? Or are plastic sandal soles perhaps carcinogenic?

Tips of noses and ears and lower lips are particularly vulnerable to sun damage as they are largely unprotected by most hats. Sun visors were for years my favourite head gear, but now I wear broad-brimmed hats. For years we had worn long sleeved shirts and sunhats in the midday sun, though we hadn't bothered with sun blocks. I must admit that today I use sun block, especially on my lips and nose, whenever I go out in the sun - which, of course, is often. I have been less careful than Michel over the years about wearing a hat and pay the price of profoundly wrinkled skin. (I call them my laugh lines) It probably didn't help that I was subjected as a child to daily sun baths under a sun lamp when hospitalised for various lengths of time each winter for recurring ear aches and swollen glands. It was sulpha drugs that finally broke the cycle of my yearly hospital stays, but the damage was done. When I began recently to get more careful about hat wearing and applying sun block, a friend said, "Isn't it a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted?"

Michel has a bald pate. Even though he has almost always worn a cap or a pork pie hat, his forehead is becoming mottled with faint red patches. I threaten him with a sailor's yellow crust if he forgets to put on his hat in the cockpit under the convertible top, where he feels protected, but isn't always.

It would have been better had we shown good sense half a century ago in shielding ourselves with protective garments: long-sleeved shirts, broad brimmed hats, loose 'pyjama bottom' style trousers, sun glasses. What can we say? The southern sun is deadly. Don't trust sun blocks entirely. Cover up!