Remembering Bruce and Preventing Melanoma

 

 

 

This man’s name was Bruce Alan Schroeder.   He died at the age of 41 and left behind his wife of ten years and two young children.  This man was also my brother, a son, a funny uncle, a good friend, a cousin and many other things to many other people.  Bruce lost his life to melanoma and I believe that his death could possibly have been prevented.

 

I am posting this today in Bruce's honor because it would have been his 54th birthday today.

 

As adults we remember having certain foes and certain friends within our family, at school, on our sport teams, etc. 

 

Specifically, within our large family I remember getting along better with some of my siblings than other siblings and I am sure that my brothers and sisters would attest to the same thing about themselves. 

 

 But I seriously don't remember anyone in our family having any real problems with Bruce.  He was the funny one who could crack a joke when you least expected it - even during the last days of his life here on Earth.  He was  the pacifist and the peacemaker who would walk away from a conflict or problem rather than contribute to it.

 

To this day, that wonderful part of his personality may also have contributed to the fact that his melanoma had spread so much before doctors even confirmed what it was.  If I remember it correctly (and I am sure that family members will correct me if I don't), he had many symptoms that most people would have gone to the doctor for way before he did. I think that many of us have that mentality - if we don't think about it, talk about it, or address "it," then "it" will go away.

 

I am not saying that even if Bruce had done anything differently, that things would have turned out differently.

 

But I will always wonder about it.

 

         So my purpose in writing this post has several purposes.  I hope that it will help you understand more about melanoma, the risk factors associated with it, how to help protect you and your loved ones from this disease and how to increase your chances of survival from melanoma.

 

 

Melanoma is the least common, but the most deadly skin cancer. Melanoma accounts for 79% of all skin cancer deaths.  The good news is that if you catch and treat melanoma in the early stages, the chances for long-term, disease-free survival are excellent.

Specifically, melanoma is cancer that arises in the cells that produce melanin.  Melanin is the pigment that gives us our skin, hair and eyes their color.

          Overexposure to the sun’s harmful ultraviolet -  UV rays,  is also what causes our skin to burn or tan.  Ultraviolet  light is invisible to the human eye, so even when it its cloudy out, UV rays are stilling reaching us.

        Tanning and burning are BOTH forms of skin damage caused by overexposure to UV radiation.  A tan is evidence that your body is trying to defend itself against exposure to harmful UV radiation, because the skin tries to absorb UV rays by making more melanin, which accumulates and darkens your skin to try and prevent it from burning.

Sunburn occurs when the skin cannot produce melanin quickly enough to prevent UV rays from harming blood vessels close to the skin’s surface.  The damage to the vessels causes them to swell, turning skin red.

A  common misconception is that melanomas only develop in the sun-exposed areas of the body.  Melanoma can occur anywhere on your body, including in the eye, in the lining of the nose, mouth, genitals or soles of the feet.   

What are the risk factors for melanoma?

 Family history is one factor.  About 10% of all people with melanoma have a family history of this cancer.  Your odds of getting the cancer increase if you have a history of melanoma in one or more of your first-degree relatives, which would include your parents, siblings and children. 

          Another risk factor is a history of sunburns.  Just one or more severe, blistering sunburns as a child can increase your risk of melanoma  as an adult.  You are likely to receive about 80% of your lifetime sun exposure during the first 18 years of your life, so sun safety is especially critical for children.  Studies show that an increased risk of melanoma is strongly associated with blistering sunburns between the ages of 10 and 19.  It can take 10-15 years for the damage to appear in your skin, so damage that was caused by excessive sun exposure in a person’s teens or 20’s may not show up until they are in their 30’s and 40’s.  I believe that this may have been the situation with Bruce.  He loved to take his shirt off and soak up the sun as he worked with my other brothers on the farm.  He certainly wasn’t thinking about what that might probably cost him and those he loved somewhere down the road.

Having fair skin, which means that you have less pigment in your skin and less protection from the UV radiation, is another risk factor.  So if you have blond or red hair, light-colored eyes and freckle or burn easily, your risk of getting melanoma increases.  Another misconception about melanoma is that dark-skinned and Asian people are not at risk for this disease, when in fact, one type of melanoma occurs most frequently in African Americans and Asians, developing on the palms, soles and nail beds.

A weakened immune system also increases your risk of getting melanoma.  Having HIV, AIDS or having had an organ transplant are specific examples of weakened immune systems.

Having many or unusual moles also increase your risk of melanoma.

Certain medications increase your sensitivity to the effects of the sun, so you should be aware if the medication that you are taking is one of them.

Other factors that influence your risk factors include pregnancy, reflective surfaces such as snow, water, sand and concrete, tropical locations, the season, the altitude, your geographic locations, ozone holes and of course, the very obvious, length of exposure to the sun.

In order to prevent melanoma then, our goal is to protect ourselves from the UV rays that cause this cancer.

UV radiation comes not just from the sun.  It also comes from tanning beds and tanning lamps, so obviously one big way to help prevent melanoma is to avoid tanning beds and lamps.  You may have heard that tanning beds give off only the “safe” of UV radiation, but there is no such thing as safe UV radiation, and in fact, many studies say that tanning beds may be even more dangerous than the sun’s UV rays

Avoiding midday sun when its rays are the strongest is a crucial step in preventing skin cancer.  For most places, this is between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Putting on sunscreen, even in the Winter, is important.

You should use a sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15 about 20-30 minutes before going outside. Sunscreen should be generously applied every two hours on the exposed parts of your body, or more often if you are swimming or sweating.  Also, sunscreen ingredients can degrade and lose their effectiveness over time.  If your sunscreen does not have an expiration date, you should never use a bottle that is more than three years old.  Babies younger than six months old should be protected by clothing, versus sun screen.

Another way to protect yourself from harmful UV rays is to wear protective clothing, since sunscreen does not provide complete protection.  And this includes sunglasses and a hat.  You should buy the kind of sunglasses that block both types of UV radiation – UVA and UVB rays.        

One of the sad truths about cancer is that we could do everything right and still end up with this disease.  However, as I previously mentioned, with early detection of melanoma, your chances for long-term survival are excellent. Five-year survival rates for patients with Stage One melanoma exceed 90-95%.  In the later stages of this disease, 5-year survival rates drop to less than 50%.

The American Cancer Society recommends a cancer-related checkup, including a skin examination every three years for people between 20 and 40 years old and every year for anyone over age 40.  You can just make this check-up part of another doctor’s visit, for example if you are going in for a physical.

Paying close attention to the appearance of your moles for possible changes, is a very important way to help protect yourself from melanoma, since early diagnosis plays such as important role in controlling this cancer.

                   Melanomas can be distinguished from normal moles using the ABCDE rule.

 

 

“A” stays for “asymmetry, which is any change in the uniformity or shape of the mole.

“B” stands for “border.”  Look for any irregularity in the margins of the mole or blurring of the borders.

“C” stays for colors, specifically various colors, such as irregular shades of brown, blue, black or loss of pigmentation of a part of the mole.

The “D” stands for diameter.  Watch for an increase in the size of a mole, with a diameter greater than a quarter of an inch, or the size of an eraser head of a pencil.

“E” is for evolution. Any change in your moles should be checked out.

You should become familiar with your skin so that you will notice changes and when you are examining your skin, make sure you look everywhere – and when they say everywhere, they mean “EVERYWHERE!” 

See your doctor if you notice any of these changes:

·       An increase in the size of a pre-existing mole

·       A change in shape or a mole or a mole with irregular borders

·       Oozing or bleeding from a mole

·       Halo formation around a mole

·       Itching, tenderness or pain from a mole

·       Any unusual sore, lump, blemish, scaling or marking on your skin

·       The appearance of a new mole

·       Any new or suspicious lesion on your skin

 

Some people feel that a tan is a sign of good health and vitality, but remember, there is no such thing as a healthy tan. 

If you didn’t know before, you now know the risk factors for getting melanoma.  You know how to help prevent this cancer, and you know what to look for to both detect and hopefully stop the cancer from progressing.

It would be sad to know that you did everything you could to prevent you or someone you know from dying from melanoma.  But I think something sadder than that would be if you did nothing and you died from this deadly cancer, especially when you had the knowledge to help prevent it.

 

P.S. Bruce's two children have grown into beautiful human beings, both inside and out.  He would be a very proud "papa" of both of them!

 

 

 

My Scuba Diving Adventure

I'm a firm believer in thinking that you can learn or benefit from almost any experience or situation.  And if you aren't willing to try something new, then you will never know what you are missing out on.

 

When my son lost his wallet, I told him that maybe this will help him to learn to keep better track of things. When my daughter had to re-do an assignment, I said that she will benefit more from the experience that way.  When my husband did not get a job that he wanted, I told him that he probably had a better job waiting for him.

      
So, that is the attitude that I decided to stick with during a weekend of scuba diving lessons last January...

 

To get a basic scuba diving license, the class consisted of two main parts.

The first part was taught Friday night through Sunday afternoon at an indoor pool. Since it was January in North Dakota, that made pretty good sense to my husband and I.

 

The second part includes four outdoor swims at Minnesota lakes, which for obvious reasons are scheduled at the opposite time of the year.

Our instructor Dwayne, like any instructor, had a very specific set of skills and lessons that he needed to teach us.

 The first scuba lesson began early Friday evening at the base pool. It was called “how to help the teacher carry the scuba tanks and all the rest of the gear into the pool area.” 

 

In Dwayne’s defense, he did say that we could choose not to help, but then he also added that he might also forget to sign our class certificates if we chose not to.  Probably needless to say, we all (cheerfully) lugged the equipment into the building.

What I learned from that lesson was that yes, you can get frostbite very quickly when bare skin touches freezing metal - that has been outside-  in North Dakota -in the dead of winter.

 

 Here are some other things that I had learned by the time our classes had finished up:

If you put accidentally put someone else’s air tank on and that air tank is twice as heavy as yours, you can’t just "let it go and try to work with it".  (It's not exactly like quicksand, but basically the same concept).

Also, along that line, when someone hands you a duffle bag and says to you “Here’s your bag,” don’t just say “Hey, thanks for the help” and go about putting the gear on.  You still say “Hey, thanks for the help,” but as soon as that person has turned around, you get your beady little eyes focused on the name tag on that bag and make sure that it actually has your name on it. 

FYI: another sign that you may have someone else’s gear is when the fins that fit the night before won’t stay on your feet today, no matter how tightly you strap them on. Duh!  (Again, not exactly the same thing, but same concept).

One of the many skills that Dwayne taught us that weekend was how to float on the bottom of the pool on our fin tips - officially called the "fin pivot."  There are several things that help you accomplish this and one of those things is the weight belt around your waist. 

The amount of weight needed on your belt is determined at the beginning of your scuba diving classes and is based on your weight.  The goal is to have the correct amount of weight on the belt to help you to go down deeper in the water when you want to - and to stay there for awhile if you choose to do so. 

So here's what I took from my fin pivot lesson: if everyone but you is beautifully fin floating on the bottom of the pool and you are spending the entire time just trying to GET to the bottom of the pool, you might want to have that weight belt thing checked out. (If I had been in the above video, you would not have seen more than the bottom of my feet desperately kicking, as I tried to get down to the bottom of the pool to fin float with the rest of my class...)

Another task that we had to be able to do was to hook several different hoses up properly to several different pieces of equipment.  A few of my fellow class mates did it like they had been doing it their whole life, but to me, that tank and all those hoses might just as well have been Medusa with a thousand snakes coming out of her head. It was just that overwhelming to me.   

We also had to know the name of every piece of equipment and what  purpose it served.  I am not usually the dumb kid in class, but that just seemed like a lot of information to learn so quickly.   Not counting the diving  gloves, there are still 25 pieces of equipment that you have to learn on the spot.   Maybe I shouldn’t complain.  We did have the previous four days to read over 300 pages of material with this information in it.  (No sarcasm here…)

      

Now, Dwayne was a very nice person, but I think that since he had been teaching this class for so many years, he took a lot of things for granted. 

 For instance, he would announce a new drill, quickly rattle off the numerous steps for the activity, then expect that we follow through with it – with fewer than 10,000 questions being asked first! 

Come on!  If I am going underwater and have to rely on artificial means in order to breathe, you had better believe that I am going to have some very detailed and specific questions!

 By the time the first step for a new skill came out of this guy’s mouth, I already had a hundred questions. How was I supposed to concentrate on any of the following steps when I was still trying to wrap my head around the first one???

From this, I learned that my husband may have been right all these years – apparently I read just a tad too much between the lines.

Another lesson from Dwane: while you are under water, you can NEVER hold your breath and you need to breath very slowly and deliberately at ALL TIMES.  That is one tough lesson for someone, OK- me- who does almost everything fast, including talking and breathing.  I learned that the expression “Old habits die hard” is really not just an expression.

 

 Something else that occurred to me later is that this weekend should have been a money-making endeavor for me. The way I figure it, that lifeguard who had a front row and center seat to see my live comedy act all weekend should have had to pay at least something for all of the very apparent entertainment he got out of it!

What else did I learn from my adventure?  I found out that no matter where you are or what you are doing, people find a way of letting you know what they are thinking.

For instance, even eight feet under the water, completely geared up, with only his eyes showing, I knew exactly what my husband was thinking when he did this (see picture below) to me several times over the course of the weekend:

Yes, he was shaking his head and rolling his eyes at me -  under the water!!! 

(I am still trying to convince myself that this is one of those things that we will be heartily laughing about years later...)

 

 Anyway, my point in telling you about my scuba diving experience is certainly not to discourage you from trying this, or any other new adventure.  In fact, I am glad that I took the class.

My point is actually one of encouragement. 

 After my scuba diving experience, with all of its trials and embarrassing moments, if I can look at the bright side and can come up with more pluses than minuses, then I am pretty darn sure that you can do the same with absolutely ANY –(and I mean ANY!) new endeavor that you try!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The Lake"

  Have you ever noticed that when people say “I’m going to the lake,” they very rarely say the name of the lake...?  It’s usually just “the lake,” as if everyone in the whole world knows exactly which lake they are talking about...?

My thinking is that people don’t say the name of the lake because the name just doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that you are one of the lucky people who get to go to “the lake.” 

I have always enjoyed being in the water whether it’s a lake, a pool, the ocean, the river, or even, according to my mother, the pond in our pasture where the pigs used to cool off!  That list used to include mud puddles too, of course.

There’s  special something about being in the water as the sun comes from overhead, warming you at the same time that the water is cooling you.  It’s kind of like a “Baked Alaska” dessert, where the cake on the outside is warm, but the ice cream in the middle is still cool.

                                                          

 I made a "baked Alaska" many years ago.  The trick is that you put a meringue on the outside of both the cake and the ice cream, sealing the ice cream from melting on the inside.  Just the name of this desert is cool-sounding, isn't it?!  (No pun intended!)

 

 When I’m floating in the water, that weightlessness that I feel in my body seems to make its way inside my head, helping me to unload some of the weight and worries of the world.

I grew up on a small-town farm in North Dakota, in the very Southeast corner - 8 miles from the South Dakota border and 15 miles from the Minnesota border.  However, even though, we were only 15 miles from the "land of 10,000 lakes", we did not have the luxury of all those lakes anywhere near us.  But – we did have one – and that was all we needed!  “Our” lake was Lake Elsie.

We went to lake Elsie most Sundays after church.  Mom always made us wait until a lunch had been packed.  We always complained, saying that we didn’t need lunch, that we just wanted to get going to go swimming. Thank goodness we never won that battle!  After a few hours of swimming, we were so very happy that the time had been taken, (precious time that we could have been swimming), to pack that lunch. 

To this day, I still don’t think that the simple lunch of a juicy hot dog, salty potato chips and fruity kool-aid has ever tasted as good as it used to when we were at Lake Elsie.

Lake Elsie was about 15 miles West from our farm.  As an adult, 15 miles usually isn’t very far.  As a child, on a hot summer day, eager to get in the water to cool off and play, it was a very long distance.  It seemed to take forever to get there.  We knew that we were finally getting close when we saw the "hill" that seemed to magically appear out of nowhere before the lake came into view. 

Since we all know that most of North Dakota is pretty darn flat, I know now that it was closer to a big bump in the road than a hill, but since we knew that the lake was on the other side of it, it seemed so much bigger to my siblings and I at the time.

My family was very large, so we usually drove two vehicles to the lake.  Mom always drove one and if Dad wasn’t driving the other one, one of my older siblings drove.  We usually took one of the cars and a pick-up truck.  My favorite vehicle to ride in was the pick-up.  I loved it when the wind blew through my hair and it was fun to have to scream at my brothers and sisters to be heard. 

 

                                     

This is a picture of a little over "half" of us.  It happened to be a time when both Mom and Dad were there, which was pretty infrequent.  My brother Bruce ( holding the little blonde girl behind the pickup) and my sister Barbara (holding the little blonde boy in front of the pickup), as well as Mom and Dad are no longer with us, as all four of them passed away between 2001 and 2011).

 We were pretty crammed in the pickup because we always squeezed some big inner tubes in with us.  And mind you - these inner tubes weren’t the sissy little pink barney floaties or the bright school bus-yellow that we fit around our kids’ waists today!  The tubes that we used were the huge black ones from the inside of the tractor wheels.  We could fit several of us on one tube and it was big enough for a few of us to stand on and try to push the others off.  Since it was black, the tube attracted the sun and would almost burn your hand if you didn’t frequently splash water on the tube to keep it cooled off.  (And you also had to watch out for that thing that poked out of the tire where the air went in!)

 

 

                                 

 

 The sand at Lake Elsie wasn’t even close to some of the fine, white European sands I’ve seen since my Lake Elsie days, but it more than served its purpose for making sand castles and covering each other up from head to toe with it.  And little did we know that the sand was anything less than perfect.

 

      After the sun had started to set and the day had cooled off, it was time to pack up and head home.  We almost always stopped for an ice cream cone in the town next to the lake.  That meant that we were eating that ice cream cone in an open vehicle going about 70 miles an hour down the road.  I remember hunckering down to try and save my ice cream from being blown out of the cone.

I had very long and thick hair growing up and I wasn’t very good about keeping it in a pony tail, so you can probably imagine that between the wet hair, the wind and the ice cream, it wasn’t a pretty picture when we got home.  But I wasn’t alone.  My sisters Sharon and Faye shared the same fate. 

After we got home, the rest of Sunday night was mostly consumed with baths and trying to comb through our hair.

I was about 11 or 12 years old when my uncle LeRoy drowned in Lake Elsie.  After that, we didn’t go the Lake nearly as often.  I don’t know if my Dad felt that it was disrespectful of his memory or if I just always thought that was the reason that we went less often. I just remember that the trips to the lake were far less frequent after my Uncle’s death.

About 15 years ago, I went back to Lake Elsie with my husband and three small children for a birthday party that we were having for my Dad at a restaurant by the lake.

When I looked at the lake that day as the sun was setting, it looked so dingy and dirty and there were a couple of dead fish on the shoreline.  I don’t know if the lake had changed that much over the years or if it just looked different because I was seeing it through adult eyes.

 I would like to think that if it had been a little warmer that day and if I had brought my swim suit with, or even had a pair of shorts and a t-shirt with me, that I still would have jumped in and went swimming.

Being at “The Lake” is still my favorite place in the world to be.  Even when it’s too cold to go swimming, I still enjoy being there.  There’s something calm and relaxing about the water that draws me to it. 

Maybe part of the allure is psychological.  Since going to Lake Elsie was easily my favorite childhood memory, maybe one of the reasons I love spending time by the water is because of all the good memories I have of me and my family there.  My siblings and I actually had a lot of chores growing up on the farm and like anyone with siblings, we did our share of fighting with each other.

But while we were at Lake Elsie, our only job was to enjoy ourselves and along with that, came enjoying the company of those around you.

And as I still continue to think to this day, as I am floating in the cool waters with the sun shining down on me, “life just doesn’t get any better than this.”

 

 

The Extra Chromosome Gives Mary That "Extra Edge!"

 

 

 

 

 

      This is my sister Mary.  She had just finished her second and final round of the Special Olympics State Bocce Ball Tournament in Grand Forks, ND!

     Before I go any further, for those of you who have never played bocce ball, below is a short video on how to play.  I was going to try and describe it in words because it's a pretty simple game, but by letting someone who knows what they are talking about do it, you'll have a better chance of understanding it...

                       
                           

        A good thing  about bocce is that you don’t need a court. If you have some colored balls and some type of pallino, you can play it anywhere that you have a little extra space.

 

     However, if you want to learn how to throw the bocce ball professionally, I suggest that you take a look at the pictures below of Mary taking her turn with the ball...

Winding up...

...and there it goes!!!

      (There weren't too many good photo opportunities that morning.  It was chilly and breezy so between the sweatshirt and the scarf not much of Mary's face was available for the camera...)


... except for when she stopped for a moment in the middle of one of her throws to "ham it up" for the camera and the crowd...!  (She never misses a photo op!)

 

     She seriously saved the day, though, with her final throw of the final round in a game.  However, she did not let it go to her head, ...she promptly walked back to her spot on the field with her team mates to wait for her next turn without batting an eye...

 

     In fact, all of the players on the teams seemed to take their bocce playing very seriously - personally I don't think that I would want to compete against them!  However, I found out that her team can play with partners of their choice, so next year I plan on asking Mary if I can be her partner for the tournament.  I will have to do some serious practicing to get up to her speed, though!

 

 

      Between games, she didn't miss a heartbeat after her last throw and the beginning of the next bingo game. She won a nice t-shirt there for"blacking out." (She's holding her prize in her lap in the top and bottom photos).

 

 

    

     That's one of the many neat things about Mary.  She will try almost anything once!  If she hears about something that someone else is doing and it sounds interesting to her, she wants to have the opportunity to do it and she will pursue it...and pursue it...and pursue it...

 

     And when she sets her mind to something, don't try changing it, unless SHE decides to change it herself.

 

     For instance, several years ago, she decided that she was "Indian," or if you were being politically correct, "native American."

 

 

We finally had to concede...she was right after all!

 

 

 

     

      Anyway, back to the bocce tournament. 

 

     Once Mary and her teammates had finished the tournament with their "git 'er done" attitude, it was time to move on to the next item of business. The next thing on the agenda just happened to be sitting down and waiting for the other teams to finish up so that they could eat their lunch after their hard workout!

 

 

 

Ah, what a fine, splendid day for bocce ball, bingo, fresh air and avid fans!!!