Today, we just got the results of my wife’s lab tests. She was negative for both Influenza and Covid-19! We are grateful for the prayers and concern expressed. I am scheduled to have a skin cancer removed from my left fore arm on February 1st.

So far, my wild youth and having gone without a shirt during summers in the Texas sun have extracted a price. I can understand now why I am having to pay the price. I am a little less understanding about having skin cancers on the top of my head, since I have always worn a helmet or hat while outdoors, whether working or fishing.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s it was the macho thing to have a deep dark tan. While we were living in the Rio Grande Valley and travelling back to visit our families in north Texas, I would let my wife drive during the first leg of our trip because it was less traffic and no large cities. I would usually take a nap in the front seat. At the immigration check point just south of Falfurrias the Immigration agent would look at me, then walk around and speak to my wife. He could not tell by my face whether I was a possible immigrant or a U.S. citizen, because my blue eyes were closed!

So, fellow fishermen if you are young and carefree, take it from a fellow fisherman who has been there and done that, do not go unprotected from the sun because you, like me will pay a price in many trips to the dermatologist to have pre-cancerous lesions either burned off, or if they have advanced further, surgery to remove them. You don’t want to allow them to get to far advanced, or there would have to be even more radical surgical work. I worked with an older employee who had to have advanced surgery on his left ear and side of his face, leaving a very deep and long gash from the top of his ear down to his chin!

The Texas sun takes no prisoners, and I suspect if you go exposed to it where you live, it will do the same to you and take no prisoners there. The visits to the dermatologists and surgeons are both time consuming and expensive, and even if you are retired it is inconvenient, unless you are that extreme individual who enjoys having his face and body cut and burned on regularly. Just Sayin…RJS

RJS Thinking about you blaming the Texas sun for your skin cancer. I'm not so sure it's just the 🌞. Think about it when I was a kid not many people even old farts like you and I are now suffered such. I'm believing it's the depleted ozon layer and possibly the radiation from the sun. The ice caps of Mars is shrinking. Why? I never wore short sleeve shirts till I was in the Navy. I rarely went shirtless as a kid. I did get a real sunburn in Florida when I was 12 or 13 and couple of Ohio sunburns tho.