Gardeners Beware!

If you think this is going to be a warning about Fire Ants, guess again.

Does the following scenario sound familiar?

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning and you go outside early to cut some flowers before it gets too hot. While out, you see the dahlias need staking. You quickly bring in the flowers and return with stakes and string. The seemingly random flight of a butterfly searching for the perfect zinnia to land upon catches your eye and while turning, notice the basil is becoming unruly. While trimming, the scent of basil releases to fill the air. The aroma makes you decide on tomato pie for dinner. Uh oh, weeds are overtaking your Better Boys. Taking the crabgrass to the compost bin, you see it needs turning and retrieve your pitchfork. When returning it to the shed, or your garage, you notice limbs and twigs rained down upon the lawn along with last night's storm. Some sticks/branches are large enough to impede the lawnmower’s progress. You must collect them in your wheelbarrow to deposit into the “brush pile” for burning later. What then? You pass the wildflower garden where briers are taller than the Holly Hock, and Carolina creeper moved from creeping to leaping. Next thing you know, hours have passed, and you are heavily into the heat of the afternoon sun.

Does this sound like you? Perhaps the names (of the plants) have changed, but the gist is there. No matter how small your plot, you can get lost in your garden. Now for the important question:

When you went outside in the early morning hours for that quick trip to retrieve flowers for the table, did you first apply a high SPF sunscreen and wait 20 minutes for it to sink in before going outside? If not, did you apply any when you grabbed a bottle of water when finding the stakes and string or reapply when grabbing the pitchfork? If you said yes, then BRAVO to you. No need to read further. But if you are like me, and all you put on were your clothes and garden shoes, please continue because-

I have cancer. Skin cancer. Basal Cell Carcinoma. Diagnosed last week. Not melanoma, so the first thought is one of relief. Relief? What an odd feeling with a cancer diagnosis-to be relieved. It’s only Basal Cell Carcinoma-BCC. Friends react to the news, “Thank goodness it's just Basal Cell Cancer.” I agree. Yet “Only” or “Just” in the same sentence with cancer seems like it would be an oxymoron of some type-Only…Cancer. But the … in between makes all the difference.

I asked my dermatologist to look at this irregularly shaped red spot about an inch inside my hairline I noticed two weeks earlier. I thought it looked suspicious, but tried to convince myself as much as I am in the garden, it was probably a bug bite and would go away. I pushed away the thought that bug bites are usually round. But if it had been growing there for awhile, surely I would have noticed it earlier, right?

I really, really wanted it to be a bug bite.

She took one look at it and said, “Hmm, it does look a little Basal-y to me.” Basal-y. Sounds so innocent. Cute almost. Like my favorite herb basil. “Oh, that pesto was so good, very Basil-y.” I love basil. I grow lots of basil. I make so much basil pesto I freeze it in the summertime so we can have chicken tortellini with basil pesto mid-winter. Maybe I ate too much basil.

If it had been melanoma, would she have said, “It looks a little Melanoma-y?” Doubt it. So yes, I am extremely grateful and relieved I only have BCC.

She referred me to a Dermatological Surgeon for Mohs Surgery. They will shave the area and remove a layer of my skin around the now biopsied site, place it under the microscope and see if they have clear margins. If not, they go back in and cut a deeper, wider chunk and repeat the process until the margins are clear. Apparently basal-y cancer can be very small on the surface, but can spread underneath like an upside down mushroom. Once clear, they suture it back together. But any mom knows when your child tears a hole out of their jeans, it isn't easy to sew it back without the edges rippling, so how is that supposed to work? I am glad it is in my hairline. Could I admit to moving up from relieved and grateful to now glad and happy, in fact, that it isn't right out in the open on my face?

When my surgeon’s office called to schedule the surgery, I asked if the path report came back with any more information, like is it staged? She replied that they don’t stage BCC, but there are types. She offered this statement: “If you have to have basal cell, it is the best kind to have.” My admitted happiness is now escalating to elation! I have the good kind!  But then later the statement eked into the party I was having in my head. If I have to have…?  I pondered, “But why do I have to have..?”

I’ll tell you why. I answered my own query, “Because of all my sun exposure, that’s why.” I should be surprised if I didn’t get it. Growing up in San Diego, much of my youth was (mis)spent getting sunburns at the beach. Back then we called it suntan lotion. As a teen you didn't want any screening, you wanted that deep Coppertone tan. So much of the damage was already done. But it didn't help to continue my inattention to UV rays.

My husband had the same type cancer about two years ago, and had the same surgery I am about to undergo. After a long day in the garden, he would top it off by getting in the pool to cool off and float in a ring with the afternoon sun for company, sans sunscreen.

So, gardeners, please take heed! Wear that goofy looking hat and apply sunscreen! Consider this a reminder, a (lengthy) public service announcement. Apply sunscreen, even on overcast days when you are just going to run out and pick flowers. Don’t get lost in the garden without it. Otherwise, as John Madden used to say about a missed extra point in football, “It can come back to haunt you.” And I wager you don’t want to see an apparition while they are carving a hole in your head…