It's getting better

even though it looks like a piece of rawhide. (And it still stings.) Frightening.



I am still seriously annoyed at myself for letting this happen. Stupid. An open invitation to skin cancer.

It could have been easily avoided
but no
I was being vain about tan lines. I always end up with a zillion different tan lines from hiking, running, gardening, daily walks...and so I decided to even things up a bit.

*Sigh*

My father has had numerous patches of skin frozen off (or whatever they do) and a couple of skin biopsies so my paranoia about skin cancer is no laughing matter.

When he was young, he was a lifeguard for a couple of summers. No sunscreen. Later in life, he was an avid outdoors man...hiking, back country backpacking, mountain climbing, marathons. No sunscreen. I don't think he started wearing sunscreen until he was in his 50's.

And he's still bad about wearing his hat. I bugged him a bunch about it last summer and he said, "I don't want to look like a dork."

He's 68!

And so stubborn.

My sister and I were recently talking about how when we were young, no one was particularly concerned about skin cancer. I played outdoors all the time and no one ever told me to wear sunscreen. Spent hours at the pool covered in tanning oil, not sunscreen.

I don't think I started wearing sunscreen until my early 30's when I started getting age spots on my face.

Now I am pretty good about always putting sunscreen on my face and upper body. And I even wear my dorky hats when I am going to be out in the sun a lot.

But now I've seared my back. Lesson learned, I suppose.

I don't think I've ever had a burn this bad.

As you can tell, it really freaks me out.