I nearly barfed up my breakfast when I was looking for an image to go with this story. Search for any image of something even slightly disturbing on the World's Weird Web and you are always going to get visually punished for your curiosity. But this one is not too bad; it is sufficient to make the point.
Metaphorically speaking, there are many counter currents opposing each other and straining my everyday life. For instance, I want a nice garden so I water and fertilize and I get weeds. I enjoy having friends over for dinner and drinks; it's nice, but it means I get more dishes to wash when the night is over. I love to have a fluffy little Shitchew (Chi Tzu / Chihuahua cross) but, as a consequence I have turds on my lawn that Thing 1 and Thing 2 refuse to pick up.
But the two greatest adversaries waging a war against each other on the battlefield that is my body are the Sun's UV and my predilection for the great outdoors. Most of us love being outside and we choose to spend our free time basking in the glorious sunshine. Many work outdoors and, as a consequence, spend 40 hours per week, 48 weeks of the year in the sun and then still choose to be outside on the weekend.
My job is a little different. I spend long periods trapped indoors under the pathetic incandescence of office lighting, only to be thrust outdoors into the field for 12 hours per day in the Kimberley or Pilbara region where temperatures exceed 40 degrees Celsius very regularly. To make matters that much worse I vehemently loath sunscreen. I don't know what it is like for the other 23.7345 million Australians, but it messes with my bodies thermoregulatory capacity. It restricts heat lost through evapotranspiration by clogging my every pore with, what is effectively, man-made grease.
I guess I would not be able to cry foul should I ever get diagnosed with a malignant melanoma. But, sunscreen or no sunscreen, whether you are exposed to UV for 40 hours per week or 4 hours per month, I beg every single person that reads this (which is probably only about 50 unfortunately) to GET A BLOODY MOLE SCAN once per year.
I used to. Every year. Then I got lazy and as each year passed I got more and more afraid to face the fact that freckles and bumps were changing and some were appearing that were not previously there. Having not had a scan since 2008, I knew I really needed to 'grow a pair' and make an appointment. But because someone had spilled a tin of yellow paint down my back my wife had to do it for me.
When I put the plug in the laundry sink and start filling it up with water my wee little Shitchew, who typically lives under our feet, is suddenly nowhere to be found. Yet, immediately after a bath he runs and runs in circles around the house at a level of stupid that makes Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels look like nuclear physicists. If the Mole Scan Surgery was the laundry trough then I was the happy little soaking wet Shitchew when the doctor told me that I was all clear of melanomas.
So don't hesitate people: it sucks to have to have a bath but it only takes a minute and you will feel so very much better afterwards.
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