Totally Off Topic – Skin Cancer Is No Joke
So, you may have noticed that I haven't been around this week.
I wasn't on vacation.
I had surgery for basal cell carcinoma. Lucky for me, it's not the bad kind of skin cancer, but still, you have to have that stuff taken care of. If you have something that doesn't look quite right… get to the doctor!
A couple of months ago, I found this sore on my nose just started bleeding. It would go away after about a week, and then a week later, it would come back and start the cycle all over again. I really thought it was nothing, but showed it to my doc anyway. She sent me to a dermatologist, he had the spot biopsied, and BOOM! I was scheduling surgery.
The spot was one-quarter inch long.
Here's the result::
Yeah, believe me, I was shocked, too. The type of cancer this was is apparently rare. The way the dermatologist explained it to me, it throws out tentacles, so she had to dig deeper than normal to get it all, and I had to have reconstructive surgery to make my nose normal again.
Why should you care?
I'm writing this and SHOWING you this so that you'll understand how important it is to protect yourself from the sun. Though, my doctor said I probably have this from years of sunburns as a kid, but I'm only partially buying that. I wonder if I'd have had this same issue if I didn't live in Florida. The sun is brutal here, and you're out in it whether you want to be or not.
My plea to you is to be careful in the sun. What looks tiny can end up being a real nightmare. After 5 days, I'm just getting my normal eyesight back because my eye was swollen shut. I've missed a week of work, and a week of blogging.
Not sure how I'll survive that. 
Please be careful out there. Lots of people are way worse off than this, especially people with the bad form of skin cancer. They DIE.
Don't be one of them… please?
