Introduction

The "Hotel Melanoma" moniker is a metaphor for living with my particular brand of cancer. Except for those lucky few of us deemed "cured", all we cancer survivors are guests of one of the many, many branded hotels in the "Hotel Carcinoma" chain. We can check out any time we like, but we can never leave. Meanwhile, let's be livin' it up; and please support cancer education, prevention, and treatment research.



Tutu Brothers

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Boomer Gloomer?

For the record, I’ll turn 58 next month and, thanks to losing a couple of scalpel fights with surgical oncologists, I swing a golf club like I’m 20 years older. But hey, since there was a mercifully brief time in 2003 when I don’t think my docs thought I’d see 51, I’m just grateful to still be a live boomer.

Nevertheless, I’m experiencing just a touch of gloominess during Melanoma Awareness Month. So much of the melanoma awareness news I’m reading emphasizes the growing impact of this beast on 20-somethings, particularly young women who’ve dwelled in tanning beds. Don’t get me wrong, that’s an awful truth that needs to be told and I commend the awareness campaigners who are telling it, but am I to infer from this very important message that if melanoma was “just” a problem for old boomer guys of Celtic descent we should care less about it? Yikes.

I know there are a lot of deficit hawks in Congress who’d like to float me off in a kayak into Arctic seas before I become eligible for Medicare or Social Security benefits. Sorry, I’m just not willing to volunteer for that mission or succumb to melanoma any time soon. So, as a proud member of a demographic group that, I’ll readily admit, is often a bit too self-absorbed, I defiantly shout out to all melanoma awareness campaigners “me too”!

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