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16 Responses to “The Stupid 365 Project, Day 18: Leatherface” -
Larissa Says:
October 19th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Wow. That sounds nasty. And a bit like what my mom got done for her facial…maybe she could just borrow some of that stuff from you and save the rest of her money. (c:
I’m working on being good about the sun…but c’mon. We neeeed that Vitamin D! (c:
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Suzanna Says:
October 19th, 2010 at 11:32 am
Jeez, Tim, thank goodness that’s over with!
How did you manage all of your writing projects, run six times a week, and endure Carac with such grace? You are amazing.
As someone whose face resembles an inkblot from a Rorschach test if I don’t wear big floppy hats and the highest SPF sunblock known to man, I can appreciate your disdain for the damage too much sun can cause. I most certainly do not want Carac in my future and after reading this I’m sticking to my silly hats and sunscreen. Thanks for posting this.
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Beth Says:
October 19th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
You are part of the generation of men, who like my brothers and my husband when they were kids, left the house early in the morning and didn’t come back till dinner time. Shirts off, no hats, playing baseball all day, the perfect summer in the fifties and sixties.
And then….. My husband resembles a hornless unicorn. He has a perfectly round scar right in the middle of his forehead courteous of the pre-cancerous lesion he had removed. He sees a dermatologist twice a year and there is always a new crop for her to harvest.
I escaped the sun damage because if I was in the sun for too long I fainted. I missed out on those perfect tans girls worked so hard to get. After all, a tan made you look healthy. Irish skin and Irish coloring kept me pasty white.
Conan O’Brien says the Irish were bred to live in a bog. It is good that I actually like the rain.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 19th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Riss, I’m sure that your mother, however strenuous the facial might have been, didn’t get assaulted daily for two weeks. If she did, I hope she looked a hell of a lot better when the was finished. You’ve got kind of goldish skin, which means either you were slightly tanned when I met you or you probably don’t have to worry about it quite the way we Irish do.
Zanna, I ain’t never seen no blots on your face, but don’t throw those hats away.
Beth, see how unfair the world is? Girls can faint and get away with it. Let a guy faint, and he’s marked for life. Sorry about your husband’s scar. I’ve been really lucky in that I’ve had some cancerous stuff removed with great skill (including a chunk of my nose) and no one can even see it, unless they know to look and are standing much closer than I’m comfortable with anyway. Consn’s got it dead to rights.
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
October 19th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Doesn’t sound like fun to me. Since I’m in my sixties, common sense came late, and I have nose issues. Hope you recuperate well; what interesting things you’ve seen.
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Phil Hanson Says:
October 19th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Yeah, and I’m whiter than your dermatologist, but that didn’t keep me out of the sun (much to my regret). The sad part of this story–okay, the pathetic part, if you prefer–is that it took me 40 years and four or five fairly severe sunburns every summer to learn that the sun is not necessarily my friend. I may go to my grave looking like shoe leather, but thanks to my resolve to never again suffer the pain of a sunburn, I won’t go there looking like tanned shoe leather.
As for keeping those cancer precursors at bay, you might try hemp oil (made from the flower tops, not the seeds). Cannabinol targets cancer cells and kills them without the high costs, pain, discomfort, and physical damage associated with conventional treatments.* You live in a medical marijuana state, so access shouldn’t be much of a problem for you.
*Disclaimer: I am not a doctor.
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Gary Says:
October 19th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
On the beaches of South East Asia, from Phuket to Sihanoukville, you can see crazy foreigners stretching out their lily white bodies to fry in the full sun. (I usually witness this sight from the safety of a large beach umbrella.) And back in town the local girls, with glorious, safe skin the color of honey, are in beauty clinics having treatment to make themselves white.
I try. I say, “See this chunk cut out of the back of my hand? See these excision marks on my forehead? White skin bad, brown skin good. Be grateful!”
People in southern Oz live under a huge gaping hole in the ozone layer. Children aren’t allowed outside at school recess unless they have large, wide-brimmed hats. And pretty young things STILL lie baking themselves on the beaches.
Tim, I’m so glad they caught you in time. (I’m glad they caught me in time!) I just hope we don’t fall prey to the universal law of dermatology: the reason dermatologists are so rich is that their patients never die, but never get better.
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Kaye Barley Says:
October 20th, 2010 at 3:28 am
You have my sympathies!!
I too am of that generation that got up early in the morning and went outside to play ALL day every day. The sun was our friend! And I was lucky enough to grow up in a wonderful little town on the water. A sandy beach was THE perfect playground. Am I paying for it now? Oh my, you betcha. Going to see my BFF dermatologist next week. big sigh.
You’ll be your handsome self again soon enough; not to worry.
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fairyhedgehog Says:
October 20th, 2010 at 4:24 am
I can’t believe you’ve been going through all that and yet keeping up a humourous, chatty blog all the time. I hope it finishes healing up soon.
It’s rather scary. I used to lie in the sun when I was a kid – we didn’t know any better then. And now we’re told we need the vitamin D, but sod that if it comes complete with cancer.
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EverettK Says:
October 20th, 2010 at 8:46 am
Sounds like a fun time in sun city! Our skin is our interface with the universe; great care should be taken with it, and it is the source of many joys and tragedies.
When I was 13, I began to exhibit “The Heartbreak of Psoriasis.” Within a year I looked like I belonged in a leper colony. I left flakes of skin scales wherever I went. I wrestled all four years in high school. I wore a t-shirt under my wrestling outfit, but still, you could see it in the eyes of my opponent all too often: “I’m not sure I want to touch that…” The head coach used to crack funny all the time at practices, “Who’s been eating crackers up here on the mats?” One of the other wrestlers once asked, as we were changing in the dressing room, “Don’t you worry that no girl will ever want to touch you?” Of course, by that time, I’d already been going for a couple of years with “the girl” who would become my wife, and I simply told him, “No.” I’d never even thought about it.
Back then, sun (a moderate amount) actually used to help it, so for a while I’d lay under a UV light. I made the mistake of coming home late one Friday night and, thinking I’d lay under it for 10 minutes before retiring, I woke up over 2 hours later. The next day I developed a blister on my chest, and by Sunday morning it was the size of small country and weeping like a country music star. At the hospital that morning, our family doctor had me lay on a bed, then took some gauze and in one swift motion grabbed the blishter and yanked about 8 inches of skin off my chest (my upper body easily cleared the bed by a foot, but he still had to clean up the edges and dress it). Our family doctor back then was “old school.”
Fortunately, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to mellow out and take care of my body, both internally and externally, and the psoriasis is now a minor annoyance that most folks don’t even realize I have.
You can either cry, “Woe is me!” or get on with life. I’ve always been a “getting on” kind of guy.
But skin, yeah, it’s a good thing to take care of. Just try convincing young idiots of that (or anything else). 
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Larissa Says:
October 20th, 2010 at 11:13 am
Well, Tim, it’s like this. I was born to my mother who is Casper’s distant relative I believe and my father, who is the color of all things Mediterranean…being from that part of the world and all…so I get this in between stage where I don’t really look tan next to the “tanners” but I’m not exactly fair skinned…
I do have freckles of all things though. It’s silly.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 20th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Lil, it’s less fun than you can imagine. I’d rather spend a weekend with Simon Cowell. Sorry about your nose issues, but the only thing to do is face up to them (no pub intended) and do what needs to be done.
Phi, why does it not totally surprise me that your treatment involves hemp? By the way, the smokable version of hemp will soon be legal here in the Molden State, although our liberal president and some other jerk Fed say they’ll enforce the Federal law out here. Maybe Arizona and California could secede together, and we could all get loaded and mow our own lawns.
Gary, I have baked myself on some of those very same beaches. What’s most amusing is to see the sex tourists get all bronzed up to impress the girls who hate, hate, hate dark skin. The Germans are the worst, I think. They go around looking like just-pulled corks.
Ahh, the beach, Kaye (and hi!) Surfboards. Sand. Wahines. Beer. Skin cancer. Basal cell carcinoma. Ummmm. Come on in, the water’s fine. If I’d known then what I know now, I would have moved to the Seven Dwarfs’ mine.
Hey, Fairyhedgehog, I have no choice but to remain good-natured. Otherwise I both look like a catcher’s mitt AND my wife is mad at me. No question that there are worse things than looking like a catcher’s mitt.
Everett: AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH. NEVER tell the blister story again anywhere I might come across it. Nevernevernever.
The country star/country song line is pretty damn good. Promise me you won’t read my next book, and if you do, slip page 258. Nothing happens on it, anyway. The Heartbreak of Psoriasis. What a brutal ad line. God, people will do anything for money. One of my current favorites is the ad about “palmar hyperhydrosis,” which is (fake?) doctor-speak for sweaty palms. Oh, the shame,the shame.
Larissa, it’s a great mix. You’re a wonderful color. And freckles rock fulltime. I always figured freckles were an epidermal jigsaw: if you could put them together right, you’d have a tan.
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Sylvia Says:
October 21st, 2010 at 3:47 am
We see the same tourists here in Spain – the ones that really make me wince are the beet red families who are out in the sun *despite already being burnt to a crisp* because “We only have a few days holiday” and so they have to make the most of it.
Luckily, I get bored too quickly to actually tan.
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Pat Browning Says:
October 22nd, 2010 at 10:33 pm
Tim,
What a scary blog! I inherited moles from my mother and developed roseacea late in life so my skin is not what it used to be — but neither am I. I lay it all off on old age and hope that’s all it is.
Pat Browning
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 23rd, 2010 at 10:51 am
Hi, Pat — I wouldn’t recommend Carac in preference to, say, a cruise, but it seems to have done the job. I’m a little less lobstery now and things are looking pretty good. I know all about roseacea, and I’m sorry you’re saddled with it. Have a couple of female friends who are enduring it. But you know, compared to some of the things “later life” can present us with, it’s not sooooo terrible.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 23rd, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Sylvia, all those years George Hamilton spent under the UVA lights, you’d think he’d be a radioactive raisin by now. There’s a guy with a high boredom threshold.
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