Dealing with skin cancer

A quick glance.Then a slightly longer confirmation glance. Then looking totally away from me.

That's how both friends and strangers looked at me for a month in late spring while I was undergoing chemotherapy facial treatment to remove pre-cancers.

Blessed with a face for radio, years of outdoors exposure to the sun had produced a multitude of actinic keratoses on my Scandinavian blue eyed, light-complexioned mug.

My childhood had been spent in the "Pepsi Generation," a time when sun-darkened skin, beach volleyball and Pepsi were symbols of the youthful, active lifestyle. Even for guys, like me, growing up in the cornfields of Iowa.

And as if we couldn't get dark enough skin from the sun, we slopped on quick-tan products like Tanfastic.

One summer I painted signs around a racetrack "to get a tan." Rolled up my Larry Bird basketball shorts to tan even farther up my legs.

Every spring, for many years, I've had a skin exam, alternating years between my family doc and a dermatologist. Both used liquid nitrogen to "freeze" any pre-cancers.

Years ago I had a basal cell carcinoma removed from my shoulder and last spring one was excised from my eyebrow. Basal cell carcinomas are the most common skin cancer.

Based on recommendation, this spring I opted for an exam by the physician's assistant and she suggested the chemotherapy facial crËme.

Applied twice daily for three weeks, the crËme first produced red spots, then the spots coalesced into giant splotches, then my entire face turned bright red, and finally the old skin scabbed off.

During treatment my face felt swollen and hot, so hot some patients cannot sleep or shave and some discontinue treatment.

I was lucky, but I did return to the PA's office, just for a checkup, shortly after a little kid stood up in a shopping cart in Safeway and screamed, "Mommy! Look at that man's face!"

I also called a former river guide friend who had undergone the same treatment.

"You'll survive," he told me, "And when this is all over, your face will look like a baby's butt!"

Well, the "butt look" I don't need, but my skin is certainly cleaner, softer (and safer).

After a lifetime of outdoors activities, here's my five recommendations:

1) Get your skin checked annually

2) Don't hesitate to get other professional opinions, including PA's.

3) Use your sunscreen

4) Wear buffs and wide-brimmed hats when on sun-lit water for long periods.

5) Use more sunscreen.

Jerry Smalley is a fishing columnist for the Hungry Horse News.