I just finished writing a story and as I was trying to send it on - lost it!  So frustrating, but since this is to help breast cancer, I'll try doing it again. 

As a child of 5, I started kindergarten in Avalon Elementary on Catalina Island - the perfect place to learn to get up in the morning, put on your bathing suit, and run down to the beach.  The routine went - lie in the sun feeling the hot sand on your body, get up and run into the cold water, run back to lie in the sun.   

It felt good to me, way too good,  and so I spent most of my life doing versions of the routine.  Lying in the sun took away my depression, made me feel safe, loved and sated.  I must have had the darkest tan around!

I've had to give up one of my favorite things because now we know it causes cancer and a couple of years ago I went to the dermatologist for a check-up and he did a biopsy and I didn't think it was anything.  There was a spot on my chest that I would peel or cut off and it would grow back.  The doctor did the biopsy on that and I went to CA for a visit with my mother.  While there, my son called and said there had been calls from a doctors office and I was supposed to call back.  When I did I learned that the biopsy had been cancerous and I needed to have more of it taken out when I got back. 

I returned, had the cancer taken completely out and went on with life.  Since then the cancer has shown no sign of returning.  It wasn't melanoma, so it was one of the other two and I can't remember which one.  I had it easy, but still need to keep an eye open to see if any other spots are cancerous and I still have a hard time knowing the difference.  

My brother had cancer on his nose and had to have surgery after to fix the scarring.  When I was a little girl I remember a relative on my fathers "farm people" type family having a get together and one of the relatives, I didn't know who he was, but his nose was obviously all chewed up by cancer.  Don't know why he didn't mind leaving it for all to see.  It freaked me out.