Sun Smart Seminar...

Yesterday I attended a seminar hosted and presented by Sun Smart, organised by my work place's Health and Wellbeing Committee.

It wasn't that they used scare tactics, most of the presentation was purely fact about how to look after your skin, how to to check it, what could happen if you didn't and most of all how to prevent sun damage and lessen your chances of getting skin cancer.  It didn't matter.  Because we all left there convinced we were going to die of it, and the fact is, in a room of 20, one of us will most likely suffer from it, even if it does not kill them.
Its probably still going to be me. What makes me be so doom and gloom about this?

I'm an idiot.  Plain, simple, short story is the I have not been Sun Smart, I have been Sun dumb.

I grew up in Scotland, sun burn wasn't common, but it did happen.  I have light (not fair) skin, it's not friends with the sun.

I have been severely burnt to the point that sometimes I can not feel the sun burn and rather than having freckles when this happens, I have what I can only describe as anti-freckles, there the skin is so damaged, it doesn't go red/brown but white.

I had have one pre-cancerous freckle removed when I was 19.

When I lived/studied in The US I was carried away with the 'tan is beautiful' movement... Knowing I have light skin, knowing I had had a pre-cancerous freckle removed, I started using a solarium.  I don't need a lecture, I know how stupid it is, I didn't give it much thought at the time, but with age comes wisdom.

I am considerably more Sun Smart now, or I'd like to think so, but then I spent last Christmas unable to move most of my body because I was so badly burnt from a trip to the beach, in which I was wearing sunscreen, but probably put it on too late.  In that trip, the damage was done early.  I can only hope the same isn't true of my life in general.

I am fastidious about putting sunscreen on my face every day, convinced this is my best fight against the early signs of ageing, for this same reason I wear sunglasses a lot. (crows feet? no thanks).

I am not so habitual with the rest of my exposed skin.  When your 3 yr old says 'we need sun screen' and you hadn't even thought about it.... you know you're doing it wrong.

I can mend my ways, but is is too late anyway?