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I was a tanorexic during my formative
years. Every Memorial Day I would lay on the picnic table in my
back yard in my two-pieced bathing suit, carefully, reverently,
smoothing Johnson’s baby oil (with a touch of iodine for
color) all over my beautiful, tastefully freckled, young skin. I
would always burn, but this was the ritual every year. It was the
advent of summer, which held the promise of many such days and a
golden tan that would look spectacular in my butter leather halter
top, trimmed with pheasant feathers and worn with low hip hugger
bell-bottoms.
I moved to Florida when I was 19. Florida
is a haven for tanorexics. My Memorial Day lasted all year. I
worked at night so that I could go to the beach during the day. As
I grew older and acquired daytime jobs, I prayed that it would rain
because working during a sunny day was torture. Many times I would
change into shorts and a tube top at lunchtime and find a patch of
grass to claim so that I could get at least a half hour of sun.
When my daughter was born, I would plan
her activities in the morning or evening. The children of
tanorexics live a hard, hard life. To this day, my daughter avoids
the sun. Her pale skin is a testament to the life she had to endure
with me.
Skin cancer runs in my family. We know now
that we plant the seeds for it early in life. How could we have
known that something as natural as the sun would be harmful? My
father made several trips to the dermatologist to have basal and
squamous cell moles carved out. My brother is on a first-name basis
with his doctor, and I’m sure he’s probably paid for
half of doc’s beach house by now. And so it has been with me
for the last several years. I’ve had three pre-cancerous
somethings dug out of my back while heavy metal music filled the
room to keep the techs happy.
Last week I had my yearly visit. I enjoy
sitting on a stainless steel slab wearing only a paper napkin for
close to 45 minutes. The lighting in the room was exceptional in
that the veins on my ankles stood out like an aerial topography
photograph of the rivers of Texas.
I have not been out in the sun for years,
so apparently the natural hue of my skin is a sickly yellow. My
“tasteful freckles” have grown into mottled, dark
patches... the most impressive of which happens to be located on my
face. I knew I didn’t look good, but the lighting narrowed it
down to ugly.
Doctors like to burst into the examining
room in a rush of cold air, and mine was no exception. I thanked
him for the swell light fixtures. He asked how I was doing, and I
told him I thought I was doing OK until I had to sit there and
really see my veins, calluses, and sallow, wrinkly, arms and legs.
He thought that was funny. He wasn’t wearing a paper
towel.
“What is it you do?” he asked.
Now this is a strange question, I thought. Why would what I do have
much to do with my skin? Did he suspect that I was an elderly pole
dancer? Was he worried about pole burns? Maybe he thought I handled
toxic waste...
“I sit in front of a computer all
day,” I said. He pressed on. “But what do you
DO?” I told him that I sent appeals to Medicaid on behalf of
hospitals, so the hospitals can recoup payment.
He asked me how the thing that he burned
off of my nose the previous year had healed. I told him it never
went away. I could always see it on my nose when I looked down and
it was distracting, so I hacked it off with a razor. “Tell
you what,” he said, “I’ll handle the dermatology,
and you stick to shaking down Medicaid.” Then he had me stand
up as he spun me around like a tailor’s dressing form,
stopping occasionally to blast a spot with cold air that hurt like
hell. I asked him if he got a payment for every spot he blasted. He
ignored me. I believe the blastings became more prolonged. He would
say, after he pulled the trigger, “This is going to
sting.” NO KIDDING? He then informed me that I had a rash
across the back of my shoulders that was probably infected hair
follicles, and the little things he was blasting were called
Actinic keratoses.
He also found a wart behind my knee. Now I
was feeling way too sexy for my paper napkin... a real dude magnet.
The nurse gave me pamphlets so that I could read up on my diseases,
as well as prescriptions for various creams that I would absolutely
have to hide somewhere in my bathroom in case I had someone over
who felt compelled to snoop in my medicine cabinet. I hid them with
my anti-aging wrinkle cream, my under-eye, dark circle salve, the
lotion called “crack cream” for my feet, my
anti-depressants, the Beano and my hair dye.
I can tell you one thing that is nowhere
to be found in my bathroom or anywhere else... Johnson’s baby
oil.
Debbie Cashon Klein is a Safety Harbor
resident.
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