Update : time for action
Not much to report on the front line, to be honest for now Melanoma is letting me get on with things almost a year on. This time last year I was awaiting the very first biopsy results.
I have noticed a briuse appear very close to my less serious Melanoma site. Do you think I have the information, experience or opinion to know what that means? Nope, it’s such a troublesome time to be in and I know I can survive what might lay ahead, but even surviving doesn’t make everything go back to how they were. Forever changed.
I have to consider things with a lot more respect for the fact I might not have long here, and as in many cases with this, life goes smoothly, even people have been declared free of Melanoma only to be killed by it. The whole thing has the potential of suddenly ending, without good reason or obvious symptoms, I know the score, but it’s very hard to describe to people. There is the potential for it to keep me on the edge all the time prehaps untill the mild age of 65, considering I have both thick (thick enough to never stop crying) and thin (thin enough to always smile about it) types of Melanoma, I certainly don’t feel this is over and I don’t think the s**t has started hitting the fan with my cancer yet, as they say one year down four more to go.
The year has ticked by and stories such as that of Alex Lines have filled my screen, headlines of 23 year olds being killed by this cancer, a mother being kept alive while her Melanoma has the potential to attack her placenta and get to her baby, I just have the urge to use my time to educate my peers. It opens up a whole new set of considerations as to the approach taken on awareness building and targeting the right messages at the right people. Young adults need to be told about skin cancer detection, because as children they already knew about prevention. I knew about prevention, I followed that advice and took preventivie messures, I’m now considering death by sunlight, somehow things aren’t fair and somewhere along the line prevention messages aren’t preventing other people getting this. One of the most common types of cancer and young people aren’t aware of the danger signs, I wasn’t when I was a teenager, I wish I was.
My focus at the moment on this issue is to create a site that promotes mole awareness and early detection amoungst young people, but I have to do it in such a way that the subject is approachable and fun. I have the skills but haven’t the time to create a photo uploading service where people can track changes in their own moles, or upload to get an opinion from moderated users, all in one central location. I wish I could do such a thing I really do, because I don’t think many people have the foresight to set such a project up right now and crucially make it free, going down the private healthcare route, it can cost £100 for screening, things have to change.
This will sound like an odd comment. But I do believe that we are now in an era where more information is reaching us, and we have yet not developed insights to manage that level of data flow. It hasn’t occured to us that our minds constitutes an environment of which only - really - we are in control of. If the buddhists, Hindus and Kabalists are correct - our minds create … and therefore it is important for us to be aware of the spaces to which our minds go. As difficult as it is (and IT IS) staying attuned in our mind to the creative flows of nature may well be a solution.
I wish you well -