I'm thinking about my family today. Well, I think about my family every day, but today, nine days before my melonama surgery, I'm REALLY thinking about my family. Here they are:
There's lots of sunscreen in this photo, but I can't help but notice how comfortable we all seem being in the sun. Wow, that sure has changed for me lately. I've always been careful in the sun, and I have done my best making sure the kids are sunscreened, but of course, nobody's perfect. In my mind, this melanoma snuck up on me when I was a kid, and has been waiting to rear its head for a lot of years. When I was a little girl, I practically didn't even know it was summer if my shoulders weren't blistered. Ouch! I can't really blame my parents for letting me get sunburned in the seventies, because they didn't know any better...but I do know better, and I've not been perfect about sun exposure for my kids. My husband, whose experience with the sun has always been easy and tans beautifully (ha! not me!), has always been, um, relaxed about sunscreening the kids. My anxiety about this is pretty high now. They haven't been burned frequently, but each of those faces I love more than anything else in the world has been burned at least once.
I'm taking everybody in for screenings with the dermatologist, and I'll do even better with the sunscreen, but I find myself wondering...will I ever look at the sun in the same way again? Will the sun always seem like an enemy?
Have any of you experienced this feeling? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
You know I've definitely been more aware since you started on this journey.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how quickly everything changed. It's okay, soon we'll have a "new normal".
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