Debate Restraint

Every so often I find myself in a Facebook ‘conversation’ with a melahomey friend’s friend, whom I’ve managed to seriously piss off without intending to. And I get to wondering whether these people are just angry or looney by nature or if I have some special talent for making complete strangers mad that I should attribute to spending a couple of decades or so in the rough and tumble debating world of law practice. Whichever may be the case, I think I’ll take a break from taking the bait and responding when a melahomey friend asks for opinions about any matter that could even possibly be more controversial than sunscreen brand preferences. Life’s too short to do more than hit the “like” button and post an appropriate emoticon.

To everyone whom I’ve managed to offend on Facebook all I can say is “whatever”, and sign off with the Hotel Melanoma rendition of Bob Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do”…



I ain't lookin' to compete with you
Meet or Tweet or mistreat you
Simplify you, classify you
Deny, de-fry, or euthanize you

All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you

No, and I ain't lookin' to fight with you
Frighten you or enlighten you
Drag you down or make you frown
Paint you clown or bring you crown

All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you

I ain't lookin' to block you up
Shock or knock or lock you up
Analyze you, anesthetize you
Standardize you or glamorize you

All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you

I don't want to straight-face you
Race or chase you, track or trace you
Or disgrace you or efface you
Or define you or confine you

All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you

I don't want to treat your skin
Make you kin or do you in
Or perfect you or dissect you
Or inspect you or reject you

All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you

I don't want to stake you out
Take or flake or head ache you out
I ain't lookin' for you to feel like me
See like me or be like me

All I really want to do
Is, baby, be friends with you

Bracketology Rock

Hoping that I’m better at fracturing classic rock songs than I am at picking winners and losers in the NCAA basketball tournament, here’s the Hotel Melanoma rendition of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold”…



I want to live
I want to give
I've been a whiner
For black art of moles
It's teen convection
I can’t relive
That keeps me searching
For black art of moles
And I'm getting old
Keeps me searching
For black art of moles
And I'm getting old

My blog’s no livelihood
I've felt like deadwood
I got some potions
For black art of moles
I've been skin fry kind
It was a fine time
That keeps me searching
For black art of moles
And I'm getting old
Keeps me searching
For black art of moles
And I'm getting old

Keep me searching
For black art of moles
U keeps me searching
For black art of moles
And I'm growing mold
I've been a whiner
For black art of moles

If You Could Read My Hind

Just a little song for the unfortunate young dermatology resident who had to perform my last full body skin check and tell me I was in for another whack at a regrowth of squamous cell carcinoma, to the tune of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind”…

)

If you could read my ‘hind, doc
What a tale my spots could tell
Just like some old-time UV
'Bout a ghost from sun worship spell
With a cancer dark bore some treatments strong
With stains upon my sheets
You know that ghost is C
And I will never be set free
As long as I've a ghost that you can't see

If I could read your mind, doc
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a cancer’s back novel
The times the drugs won’t quell
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won't read that book again
Because the ending's just too hard to take

I'd block the rays like a UV star
Who got burned in a teenage fit
Enter number two
A Doogie green to play the scene
Of carving all the ‘good’ skin out of me
But for now doc, let's be real
I never thought I’d get back this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where C went wrong
But the healing's gone and I just can't get it back

If you could read my ‘hind, doc
What a tale my spots could tell
Just like some old-time UV
'Bout a ghost from sun worship spell
With a cancer dark bore some treatments strong
With stains upon my sheets
But stories always end
And if you read between the lines
You'll know that I'm just tryin' to understand
The feelings that C’s back
I never thought I would feel this way
And I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where C went wrong
But the healing's gone and I just can't get it back

Melanoma Monday 2014

“Melanoma Monday” in May is an invention (and registered service mark) of the American Academy of Dermatology. Last year AAD made a fine mess of Melanoma Monday with a “Spot Orange” campaign that many in the melanoma community found dumb, counter-productive in building awareness of melanoma as a deadly disease that’s not ‘just skin cancer’, and mildly offensive. And we voiced our opinions to AAD.

Much to my surprise, AAD listened. In a conference call and webinar held last evening, AAD outlined their 2014 campaign plans and the much-derided “Spot Orange” promotion is gone. They won’t be encouraging dermatology clinics to post happy party pictures of staff members clad in orange scrubs and will instead promote the wearing of melanoma’s true awareness color, black. Not that I participated in the orange crush ‘fun’ last year, but I’m nevertheless relieved for the sake of others because dressing like a giant Cheeto in a state where recreational marijuana is now legal could be quite hazardous to one’s health.

This little dust-up has reminded me of a couple of things. One, the melavangelism cause isn’t about a single day in May, or even about the entire month for those of us seizing all of May for melanoma education. As our Hotel Melanoma Chaplain has often said, every day is a “Melanoma Awareness Day”. Two, the cause of melavangelism belongs to we melanistas who actually dwell at The Hotel Melanoma, and not to organizations like AAD which have their own agendas—like branding their member-doctors as the “go to” health care providers who “spot skin cancer”. We should be leaders, not followers, and if we don’t like what some organization is doing in the name of melanoma awareness we should say so, loudly if need be. They just might listen.

Until next time, I’ll sign off with a replay of The Hotel Melanoma version of “Stormy Monday” from The Allman Brothers Band…



They call it Black C Monday
But ... Tuesday it’s as bad
They call it Black C Monday
But Tuesday it’s as bad
Lord ... and Wednesday's worse
And Thursday's also sad

Fool people fry on Friday
Saturday they go out to braise
Fool people fry on Friday
And Saturday they go out to braise
Sunday they go to church, yeah
Where they need now to pray

Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy on we
Lord have mercy
Lord have mercy on we
Though we’re tryin' ... tryin' to mend this Black C
Won't somebody please end its bad ass spree

Oh, no

Sunbrowned

This was me at seventeen, at the end of a summer of lifeguarding and as brown as a kid of Celtic descent could get. Cooking melanoma in a black Speedo. And hoping and praying to draw a very high draft lottery number after I turned eighteen, because at the time a tour of duty in Vietnam slogging through rice paddies with an M-16 in my hands seemed like so much more of a clear and present danger than using baby oil as a ‘sunscreen’ and catching ‘skin cancer’ when I was much older.

But a wonderful summer it was. And a seventeen- year-old male brain is not exactly good at making rational assessments of the potential long term consequences of high-risk behavior, which is why we used to draft kids to fight our wars. So, dear indoor tanning industry, how can you possibly make a principled argument in opposition to legislation banning minors from using tanning beds? I guess you’d sell cigarettes to a seventeen-year-old too?

To the tune of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown”…



I can see my fryin’ back when I’m lackin’ dress
At a pool where the U brought youth mole distress.
Sunbrowned, you better take care
Since I found mel’s been creepin' ‘round my back bare.
Sunbrowned, you better take care
Since I found mel’s been creepin' ‘round my back bare.

C's been cookin' since sixteen in the baby ‘screen
And C don't always stay but C’s really mean.
Sometimes I think it's a shame
When I get feelin' better when I'm feelin' no pain.
Sometimes I think it's a shame
When I get feelin' better when I'm feelin' no pain.

I can picture ev'ry groove that a tan could bake;
Gettin' lost in yer sunnin’ is your first mistake.
Sunbrowned, you better take care
Since I found mel’s been creepin' round my back bare.
Sometimes I think it's just skin
Then I feel like I'm winnin' when I'm losin' again.

I can see her cookin’ fast in mutated genes;
C's a hard evil demon, got me feelin' mean.
Sometimes I think it's a shame
When I get feelin' better when I'm feelin' no pain.
Sunbrowned, you better take care
Since I found mel’s been creepin' round my back bare.

Sunbrowned, you better take care
Since I found mel’s been creepin' round my back bare.
Sometimes I think it's just skin
Then I feel like I'm winnin' when I'm losin' again.