With My OWN Dear 16 Year Old Me

I'm not in the best of moods today so this is the perfect day for me to write this post. Melanoma Awareness Month (May) is fast approaching but I feel the need to not wait until then. I'm writing it now while I have a lot of "have mercy!" in me.

The David Cornfield Melanoma Fund in Canada made the ULTIMATE melanoma awareness video several years ago and it's still shared, used, uplifted to this day. Prepare to see it often in May. It has been seen, so far, over TEN MILLION times in its six years existence! And it is Dear 16 Year Old Me. In case you ignored my first link to it in this post, here it is again. Besure to watch it before moving on to something else.

Here's my own letter to my 16 year old me. Keep in mind, I was a pretty good kid, a Daddy's girl, and Mama and I at this time had the stereotypical Mother-Daughter relationship. I was the ultimate rebel when it came to her. If Daddy had been the first one to tell me to have that mole removed, well despite hating procedures, I probably would have had it removed to make him happy and to shut him up about it. But. NO! It was Mama who nagged the pure-tee-crap out of me. So. No. I hung onto that dang thing just to make her miserable. Now...

Dear sixteen year old me, for being such a decent kid, you sure were stupid and rebellious! You went to church every Sunday, active in the MYF, and you took that blasted mole everywhere you went just to make Mama mad and to hear her beg you to get it removed so it wouldn't give me trouble one day! Me, every time she mentioned that mole, you told her...every time and there were a LOT of times, to "Leave me alone! It's just a mole for crying out loud! It's not like it's going to kill me or anything!"

Yes, dear defiant sixteen year old me...you did say that. Repeatedly. And guess what? You should've listened to Mama! The old gal actually knew what she was talking about. Garden Peas!!! (Mama's equivalent of cussing). Why couldn't you have had that mole removed and shut her up? It's not like she didn't have plenty of other stuff to nag you about mercilessly! Oh no. Not you, me. YOU had to keep at it. Not only did you keep that mole, you enjoyed laying out in the sun. In the backyard. At the pool. At the yearly trip to the beach. You'd fall asleep out there. Sunblock didn't exsist, but suntan lotion did. And it all smelled like coconut. Remember that, me? You hated it and wouldn;t wear it. If you were in the backyard or at the pool you used Johnson's Baby Oil. If it was at the beach, you didn't use it. Went just bakable skin.

Remember those burns? I remeber at least 3 really good ones. There may have been more. I mean, I did fall asleep out there. But man did I look good! For me. Never was a bathing beauty, but I was passable. And a good tan made us all look good. The tanner the better the bragging rights. Rememebr, me? You were soooooooooo, say again, vainly stupid!

And dammit, if Mama wasn't right! That damn mole that you hung on and got sunburned with, and, did I mention that little talked about the time famiky history of melanoma...well, guess what Smarty Pants?

It's killing me. Literally.

See Dear 16 Year Old Me, you and me, Kid, we couldn't see the furute and we didn;nt understand about melanoma and there just wasn't the info about it that we have now. We didn't know that stupid mole could really kill me. And it is.

See Me, years have passed since we were 16 and have been bitten and I have my own melanoma dignosis. I started at stage 3b in July 2008 and jumped to advanced stage 4 in Sepremebr 2015. Brain (4 tumrs, lung, spine...bone). I was told in July 2016 that Duke had nothing left to offer me and they gave me a month. Well Me. I'm still here and can write this. I'm living on borrowed time and I kow it and I', only 57.

Dear Sixteen Year Old Me, 57 may sound "old" to you right now. But trust me. I'ts not old. At all. Tell other 16 year olds, you;ve got a lot of life left to live and you REALLY do want to see 57 and way beyond.

Live the coming years smartly. There are tanning beds now. STAY THE HECK AWAY FROM THEM and tell your friends that. They are killers. When you're outside and in the sun, wear sunBLOCK at least 30 or higher and apply liberally and every 2 hours. And be fashionable and make hats fashuonable and wear a hat, prefreabaly with a wide brim. If you CAN stay out of the direct sun in the early afternoon, do. Be sun smart and safe. That tan really is not worth your life.

I do NOT want my srory to be your story. Heed my warnings and the warnings of others. For the record, I stopped laying out when I was around 18-19. I was starting to hear more about Grandaddayd's melanoma and basal cell skin cancers (he was a sawmill man) and I knew I didn't want any parrt of any kind of cancer. I stopped, but the damage was done. It just was. That's how it goes. Do the damage today and pay for it later. In my case, decades later.

Dear Sixteen Year Old Me, I love you. I loved you then and I love you now. You're a Granny now. You've two grown children. Tell them about me. Tell them the whole story and tell them how I wish I could have lived those years differently.

Be that one final blessing for others by sharing our story NOW and prevent others from having a similar story to share later. We always think "this" happens to "other people." WE are ALL other people to everybody on the planet except for ourselves. YOU ARE OTHRE PEOPLE!

So long, Sixteen Year Old Me!

charis