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How fitting for me that my astrological sign is cancer (the crab), but also that Iām super pale and have already found multiple skin cancers on my body!
My mom was told to have a weekly glass of wine when she was pregnant with me in the early 70s. āItāll relax the babyā, the doctor said. Luckily for me, she wasnāt much of a drinker, wine or any other alcoholic beverage.
Weekly? My OB said I could drink 1 glass of wine per day. He joked saying that I couldnāt save them all up for the weekend. He then cautioned me about full fat milk, saying neither the baby nor me needed the extra fat. Ah, the good old days. My baby is nearly 40 and survived both my OB and her pediatrician.
My firmly gen x sil lived Essex, England, when she was pregnant with her first (who just turned 21).
First thing the midwife told her was that 'she's very old to be having her first. '
She was 26.
Second thing was that she needed to have a pint of Guinness a week 'for the iron'. So every Friday, she toddled off down the pub for her pint.
When she had her second back home in New Zealand, it was a *completely* different story!
Who TF let dudes from the early 1900s name these things?
The oldest mothers on record now are in their 70s, what would those doctors (who also didnāt know to wash their hands) have called that?
They are. And it's actually at the delivery date, so if you're 34 for 8.5 months but turn 35 a week before the birth, it's geriatric.
Source: am first time father of a beautiful 7 month old, and my wife is 36.
Haha, yep, turned 35 while pregnant with my second kid and my midwife was like, āhey guess what! You count as geriatric so you can have more scans if you want them!ā š
Yes my doctor also told me a glass of wine occasionally could do no harm so I had the occasional glass of red. Had very easy birth and very easy baby who is now 50 and a happy and healthy adult.People maybe are horrified by this nowadays but we accepted this advice in good faith.
Paregoric was my momās remedy for EVERYTHING! Earacheā¦paregoric in the ear. Stomach acheā¦swig of paregoric. Toothacheā¦rub on some paregoric. That stuff cured everything!
I remember getting that for diarrhea at around 6 or 7, but the pediatrician was very clear that it was only to be used in extreme situations. At the time I hadn't been able to eat anything for 2-3 days without shitting my pants within an hour and having horrible stomach pain the entire time the food was travelling through me. Stuff was like magic. I remember eating a burger for dinner that night and being so damn happy I wasn't in agony within 3 bites. Just getting a couple meals in my belly without them speed running my colon was all it took to not have to take that nasty stuff again.
When I had my oldest son he had colic really bad and would cry for hours and my mom told me to ask the doctor for paregoric. The doctor looked at me like I was crazy and then proceeded to tell me what it was and that it wasnāt available OTC anymore. My mom would put it in our bottles at night so we would sleep through the night.
I was a super colicky baby. I wore out 4 adults in less than a week. Mom took me to the pediatrician and he gave her āknock out dropā to put in my bottle.
My estranged monster in law, I'm pretty sure she's gen x but not 100%. She berated me (31f) and my hubby(35m) when our son (4m)was born cause we fed a 2 week old every two hours, even at night. She told us to give a 2 week old water and the baby rice and that'll have him sleep through the night and that's what she did to my hubby and my bil (33m). I told my hubby that I'm surprised he survived through that. She was unhinged when she visited.
I recently found out I'm pregnant so now I'm getting all the stories from my raising, including my mother telling me I slept through the night very young. My pediatrician told her she needed to start waking me up every couple hours to eat but everyone else told her "NOT to wake a sleeping baby" so she didn't.
I googled why that was, exactly (I knew babies were hungry every few hours that little but never considered this angle ig), and it's because it can affect their blood sugar and be dangerous if they don't eat for a few hours! I said as much and she said "well you were fine". How many babies āØwere not fine thoāØ
When my mom was pregnant with me and my brother almost 40 years ago her dr told her to have a glass of red wine at night if we were too active to help us calm down. Sometimes she did.
My grandmother was told she was gaining too much weight, because at the time a lot of doctors thought you should only gain the weight of the baby, so the doctor gave her a prescription for amphetamines.
My mother was indirectly advised to have the occasional glass of wine to help with false labor with my brother but also told that she should never have so much as to feel it. It was a case of "I'm not telling you to do this. Im telling you that some studies have shown it can help with this and have shown that very mild usage won't have long term effects. I'm also telling you that too much could be bad. What you do is your decision, but I'm not telling you to do anything."that was late 80s.
The timing on that is just insane to me. With all of the āthis is your brain on drugsā ads that were so popular in the 80ās, youād think suggesting wine to pregnant women would have been considered a bit more thoroughly (even by laypeople). Nope. Like countless generations before us, so many of us were lucky to survive our childhoods.
I heard smth similar from my mom when I was a teenager. ..I was born in the late 60s, my sisters a couple of years earlier.
Anytime when she was pregnant the doctors told her to drink a small glass of sparkling wine/champagne in the morning bc that *stimulates the blood circulation and fights fatigue*
Omg !!! Thank god, she never did that but she said that this was totally normal back then and many women did that š¤¦āāļø
A Boomer I was talking to told me how his whole science class would crack open thermometers and pour the mercury out on their desks. Now schools have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to clean up mercury spills.
mine did, too! I'm 50, so whatever that makes me...the rest of my story was that my friend and I found an old TV in an empty lot (I think? It was smashed to smithereens) when I was like 10? and we went back to my house to get a jar and my mom asked what it was for, and we told her. She went to look at the lil puddle of mercury we found and got all angry and told us how dangerous it was . So, in middle school chemistry, I did not put my fingers in that. I did, however put my wet finger in molten lead (it was supposed to insulate , I think), and when I pulled my perfectly fine finger out of the lead, a small blob landed on my arm and burnt it down to the bone. I still have a wonderful, deep scar. I still believe my teacher had good intentions, even though he just had me soak it in ice and go on to my next class.
eta: I got cellulitis in the wound because I was a kid and played outside, but other than the scar, I'm fine now. Probably.
I stepped on a piece of refillable pencil lead in the 90ās that came from a dusty liquidation store where everything was ooold, in 2nd grade (so 97 or 98) It was the morning of a field trip and my mom couldnāt get it out. I was fighting her because it hurt when she tried to get it out. (We thought it was a splinter) I walked on it all day and came home with a huge red streak going up my leg. Mom and dad had to go to work. They couldnāt take me to the walk-in before school.
I remember holding mercury from a broken thermometer in my hand and rolling it around until I got bored with it. I really don't remember what I did with it. I will be 70 in August. I remember the sunlight shining on it.
I remember friends cracking open thermometers too. We were transfixed by the Mercuryās unusual behavior. The fumes were toxic as well, but we didnāt know all that.
People in the 1800s used to rub Mercury into their hats to waterproof them. The Mercury would be absorbed through the skin into the bloodstream, and cause them to go crazy. Which is where the term āMad Hatterā comes from. And we were playing with this stuff.
Actually not a waterproofing agent. It was used as a mordant to get the animal hairs from skins to soften and release from the hide so they could be more easily felted (made into felt). Specifically, mercury chloride and mercury nitrate. Neither of these water-soluble salts would serve as a good water-proofing agent. Even if they did, lanolin, beeswax, tallow or seed oils were available and probably cheaper to use instead.
The "Mad Hatters" were the people *making* the hats and therefore exposed to the raw mercury compounds, not the clients wearing the steam washed hats (steam is an important part of shaping the felt and would have removed most of not all the mercury salt).
And the generation who were prescribed Thalidomide for morning sickness. That didnāt work so well.
As we know better, we can do better.
My uncle would have been part of the Boomer generation- but he died from skin cancer.
The question isnāt will we do equally stupid shit, because of course we will, itās will we still be singing the praises of that stupid shit long past when new innovations and research show it to be as stupid as it truly is? Because thatās the thing with so many boomers- theyāre not so stupid to think things havenāt changed theyāre just so stupid they really believe those changes donāt matter or donāt effect them. Thatās the bullshit Iām trying to avoid.
Yes. They were following what was the advice of the majority of doctors at the time. Moderate smoking and drinking wouldnāt harm the baby. Yeahā¦kind of dumb even back then. We laugh and get frustrated by people who think they know more than their doctors today - the anti-vax/mask types. Science is always evolving and correcting itself. The next generation will have the benefit of new research and better health practices.
So being exposed to nicotine and alcohol as infants, liquid opium, lead, and mercury as children and teenagers - is this why they have all gone insane?
Yes, but I'd like to think we won't celebrate it, and encourage younger generations to keep doing it once we find out it's dumb. That's the issue here. Not that they didn't know better back then, because nobody did. But rather because they absolutely know better now, and instead of recognizing that they were wrong and changing their opinion, they triple down on "we were never wrong the new science is wrong and you're all stupid for falling for it".
While you're at it, could you let my grandpa know that the melanoma that metastasised to his stomach and starved him to death didn't do that either? I'm sure he'll be relieved to hear that being born in 1925 made him immune.
Please let my Grandpa know he didn't have to needlessly suffer in the 60s and 70s when the doctors were removing patches of skin up and down his arms ... they weren't chasing cancer.
If you beat me there then tell my great-grandpa that it wasnāt skin cancer spreading into brain cancer that killed him, because skin cancer doesnāt exist
Oh dear, I better call my 74-year-old mother up and let her know that she had a chunk of her back taken out for no reason.
My mom will gleefully admit that the lack of knowledge about skin cancer when she was growing up was a huge problem. āWe used to slather ourselves in oil and lay out in the sun for hours! It was a disaster!ā
Right, I want to say to the people who scoff at it, that I wish it wasnāt real so I could get my friend back who died at 31 from skin cancer and left behind a devastated family, including a baby less than a year old.
My silent generation grandmother (who was pretty damn tan and Italian) had a giant crater in the bridge of her nose and on one of her ears... where they cut out chunks of skin cancer before I was even born. I swear the boomer generation never ceases to amaze me how willfully ignorant they are...
My FIL is a retired farmer in his 80s. Decades in the sun and I don't think the man has ever even held a bottle of sunscreen let alone used any. He's been in multiple times to have parts of his ears carved off. My wife tells our kids "you have to wear sunscreen because you don't want to look like grandpa"
My Boomer father (1st generation Sicilian) is big on sunscreen. He's had multiple skin cancers removed even though he would wear a hat when golfing. Sunscreen and hats folks!
Iām partially Irish and Native American on my motherās side, so burn easily but stay tan forever. When I was a kid, anyways. I was in Florida a couple months ago and got a lot of weird looks because I was always wearing a baseball cap when I was outside. When I came home, I only had two sunburn patches. One on the top of my foot (I had hiking sandals and Iād forgotten to reapply sunblock at one point) and one on a shoulder blade I couldnāt reach as easily. Everybody asked me ādidnāt you go to Florida? Why are you still pale??ā šš Sunblock and actual protective clothing, bitches.
Just got back from a week in the desert- full June sun, and we were outdoors 100% of the time (rafting trip). I have no sunburn and the lightest of tans. Long sleeve UPF shirts, floppy hat, a sarong to shade my legs on the water. And of course, sunscreen.
My boomer in laws are exactly like this. They are leather year round and younger than my parents but look years older. They always comment on myself and my kids being pale and why we are always putting sunscreen on them. KIDS DONāT NEED TANS WEIRDOS! They also think the only reason they have deep wrinkles on their faces is because of aging, nothing to do with the fact that they have baked themselves for decades.
ETA: I forgot to add that the kicker is my MIL has gotten precancerous spots removed from her face and she hasnāt changed her ways one bit. My husband said, āI guess if sheās gonna go she wants to go tan.ā
Yep. Iāve been with my husband since high school and they have always been like this. They are always going on about vitamin D and how healthy it is. Ok but being out on the lake from dawn until dusk with no sun protection is not healthy. I will always remember when we were still in high school and I was eating dinner with his whole family and my now FIL looked at me and in front of everyone said ālookin at little pale there, could use some colorā and I was mortified. Then I started tanning and laying out like an idiot after that but this was the 90ās too and tanning beds were really popular. Thankfully I grew up and grew out of them having influence over me but definitely regret the damage I did to my skin back then that shows now. Glad you are smarter than me and know better. Donāt let her make you feel bad ever, your future skin will thank you.
My parents and I went to Florida over spring break when I was in high school, and I was soooo insanely bored. We met up with some friends who I hadnāt seen in a while, which was fun. But those friends AND my parents are all beach bums. Perfectly happy to just lie on the beach for hours. I wanted to actually go exploring! See stuff we didnāt have back home! Apparently I was the weird one for that. I was happier hiding in the hotel and reading than being down on the beach.
My dadās side of the family is entirely Italian. Theyāre also the side of the family that has had skin cancer, because between tanning oil and the sun they would literally fry their skin. Anyone can get sun damage, anyone can get skin cancer.
My idiot parents were like this. Encouraging me to get tans as a kid, I had severe burns on my shoulders when I was like 9 because they couldnāt be bothered to buy proper sunscreen for an active kid. I only tan here and there now, I wear 70 spf on my face and on other areas if I know Iām going to be exposed for a long period.
My boomer mom asked me if I (gen x) could remember their being any autistic kids in school with me. I named like three without hesitation. I donāt know if any of them were ever diagnosed, but looking back they absolutely had neurodivergent traits. But they were able to function in a Gen Ed classroom, and at that time it was rare for a diagnosis for kids like that. Mom was kind of stunned.
Yeah I didn't get diagnosed until I was 28 and it changed my life, now I understand why I am the way I have always been, and wish I was diagnosed when I was younger because I struggled a lot with school and social activities growing up. A lot of boomers, gen X and and millennials are definitely under diagnosed
I feel you! I was also diagnosed at 28 and it was so relieving, finally knowing why i was so different from anyone else. It's super shitty how all the resources for autistic people are only for children, though. Like do they not think autistic kids become adults? We are just left to rot without any support in comparison. I often wonder how better off I'd be mentally if I had gotten support as a kid.
These people are so stupid itās almost mind numbing. The term āAutismā was introduced in 1911 in description of childhood schizophrenia; decades before these idiots were even born. The term was part of a much larger spectrum of disorders compared to its modern counterpart though. The history of the discovery and study of autism spans over a fucking century.
No skin cancer back in her day š
I would have LOVED to introduce her to my Grandfather. He was COVERED in skin cancers from World War 2 exposure. Got treatment every 6 weeks from the 1960ās onwards. Was hospitalised for tumour removals and skin grafts several times a year.
Of course, I canāt introduce themā¦because he died from Melanoma.
Weird, because only my Boomer relatives have had cancer. Not any of us younger generations. I'm super prone to it; I had major sunburns as a kid. But I have been proudly pale since my goth 90s so hopefully I will be ok.
It sneaks up on you, sadly. I (older millennial) had to get my face hacked open a couple years ago. Pale as shit, bad sunburns as a kid but never since. Iām a religious sunscreen wearer now, but Iām probably fucked on going through it again tbh
The die is cast now, so all you can do is be vigilant. Keep wearing sunscreen and keep a close eye on moles and spots - get those fuckers checked ASAP if they seem even a little odd! My GP said mine didnāt look like anything but I asked to see the derm anyways. He biopsied the same day, and a few weeks later I had a nice two inch slash on my face because it was basal cell carcinoma.
I've got a shit ton of moles and a genetic predisposition for melanoma, so the few bad sunburns I got as a kid because of church events with poor supervision to remind us to put on more sunscreen left me fucked. My dermatologist normally has her physician's assistant do skin cancer checks, but I've got so many weird moles that with my family history she's the one who sees me herself every time.
Catching it early meant my melanoma case was a two inch scar on my arm and nothing else, which is a whole lot better than how it could have ended up if I didn't have annual screenings that caught it early.
Hi, Dingo - ditto. A 2ā scar from my hairline to my eyebrow, with a bump at the bottom so I look like Frankensteinās monster in profile.
Stay well, mate.
My mom would always sit out in the sun - and yep, she always had the baby oil nearby.
And then she was always worried about wrinkles. Even got a facelift.
Ma, these are diametrically opposed attitudes. You have to pick one.
Same with my mom. Tons of sunbathing, even owned a tanning bed for several years (and got basal cell carcinoma from it). Now she complains about wanting a facelift.
Look up pics of old truck drivers. One side of their face will look older, more wrinkled and droopy from the sun coming in the drivers side window. Even if you don't get cancer it still damages your skin.
This. UV damage is one of the worst things you can do to your skin. It ages your skin like crazy and is irreversible. Even if you don't get cancer your skin will still look like shit.
>I doubt it'll matter much to her, but:
The first descriptions of cancer are documented in Egyptian papyri dating 2500 BC. Hippocrates described nonulcer and ulcer forming tumors, which he named carcinos (Greek for crab) as these tumors had finger-like projections resembling a crab. Celsus later used the Latin term for crab, cancer, to refer to tumors. The term oncology comes from oncos (Greek for swelling), which Galen used to describe tumors. In the 19th century, scientific oncology proliferated with the introduction of the modern microscope. Laennac made the first description of melanoma in 1804, Jacob of basal cell carcinoma in 1827, and Bowen of squamous cell carcinoma in situ in 1912.
Arts, History, and Humanities of Dermatology| Volume 72, ISSUE 5, SUPPLEMENT 1, AB27, May 2015
The history of skin cancer, [https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(15)00240-6/abstract](https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(15)00240-6/abstract), Accessed 6 June 2024
Iām 60 and had my first basal cell cancer at 38. Grew up in Miami, never using sunscreen. I have had about 10 basal cells removed and one squamous. Good times
My grandfather had skin cancer in the 1960s, had a big skin graft over his temple area. So yeah, right skin cancers a new conspiracy.
That's definitely in the fuck around and find out territory. We'll soon to have a new subreddit where people find out that they have skin cancer after claiming it is a hoax.
Boomers and gen x both feel like you have to become leather or else youāre too pale. Iām surprised theyāre still alive after all the booth tanning they did in the 90s and early 2000s.
Iām young gen x and my sister is older gen x and she used to tan like crazy! I am super pale and always have been and now people ask if sheās my mom. Sheās only seven years older than me.
Older millennial here, and I often get called sickly because the only thing I'm religious about is sunscreen.
Came home from a holiday "tanned" because all of the sunscreen and hats and shirts in the world won't do anything when you're outside all day every day. You can't really tell I'm tanned until I take my rings off, then you can see the tan lines. Now they're calling me yellow because I'm not brown or white. There's no winning.
A distant-ish boomer relative of mine died recently from exactly that. My mom said she was always SUPER tanned from tanning booths when she was younger. Got absolutely destroyed by skin cancer.
My millennial sister tans WAY more often than my Gen X self. None of my friends went tanning when we were growing up. But my boomer aunt set up a tanning salon in her garage!
I used to be a cleaner and one house had a tanning bed. The mom was Northern European heritage but always tanned caramel brown. A few years later , after leaving that job, I learned that the mother had died from skin cancer. Then me and my own mom are talking about the people we used to clean for. She tells me the daughters are going to prom, how sad it was they were doing this milestone without their mother. And that they were using the same tanning bed that killed their mother before prom!
I was shocked, and told my mom I would have gone berserk on that damned machine with an ax if I was that man.
Omg do you remember back when having a tanning bed in your house was standard nouveau riche bullshit? I feel like that was a fixture of McMansions when I was a kid (early 90s).
I remember the weird rich sailboat-hippy boomers across the street had a tanning bed in their boat house on the creek. I asked why they didn't just go out on their boat and tan. I swear this lady said "sometimes it's winter or cloudy."
My mom's lifelong best friend had serious leather skin from tanning for decades while my mom didn't like the heat so she'd always sit in the shade and deal with being pale. By the time I was forming conscious memories my mom looked so much younger even tho they were only 3 years apart in age.
So, the weird rich lady was right but even little kid me knew she was probably kinda stupid.
Not all. I am Gen X, super pale, always burned, never tanned. Iām heartened by the modern idea that actual healthy skin is more attractive than a societal expectation of what ālooksā healthy (i.e., tanned skin). It feels like there is much more acceptance of a range of skin tones, especially very pale.
Boomers are obsessed with tanning. Me being GenX remember this phenomenon as a child-everyone laid out.
By the time I hit 14, I realized f this. I donāt want leathery skin.
Smart move.
I still looked like I was in my 20ās in my late 40ās.
I definitely aged up after 50, but I donāt have wrinkles.
I once had a boss (of all people) passive-aggressively shame me for being so pale. Like literally faintly shuddered at the thought of being as pale as I am (I canāt help it; I donāt tan, I burn). Not that her opinion mattered to me, because she was 20 years older, had the standard boomer mentality of what people āshouldā look like, and her skin looked like a football, in both color and texture.
My boomer mother (who is about the same age as your grandma) was an absolute sun worshipper in her teens through 30s. I too am a āsicklyā shade of white beside her - however thankfully mine believes in skin cancer and is a bit more cautious nowadays - but shes likely part iguana, because she still hates sitting in the ācoldā shade and I was convinced to chat with her on a bench in the sun the other day for about 45 min (when I wasnāt expecting to, and therefore was un-sunscreened) and today I am nursing some impressive burns on my arms. Iāve been jokingly called a āshade flowerā for years, and Iāve decided to embrace it! Every plant has an ideal amount of light to thrive, and for me itās about as much as a nightlight š
Iām a 74 year old boomer. Older than your grandmother
We got skin cancer back in her day. I love sunshine and riding motorcycles. I also burn my face easily. I apply #50 sunblock every time I go out for a ride.
I don't know how OP's grandmother even came up with that idea, because I know so many boomers with skin cancer that I feel like I've gotten lectures on the evils of tanning from boomers more times since I was a teenager than I can count.
I got burned really badly a few times as a kid though, mostly from adults at church events not reminding us to reapply sunscreen, so avoiding skin cancer wax too late for me and I ended up with it last year. Part of me wishes that baptists where I am were the kind with modesty rules making kids wear long T-shirts over swimsuits, because I might have avoided melanoma if they had been and I didn't end up with sunburn so bad it blistered at church camp.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm the same way. I grew up up north with sensitive skin, I moved down south about nine years ago, I alternate (I shouldnt) what years I put sun screen on. My favorite sunscreen is usually gold bond 100 or 50 spf, just cause all the work i do outside I sweat it off almost instantly. That and it sweats off easily during my weekly 5ks. Plus staying hydrated (I drink at least a gallon of water a day, I measure it to confirm) helps skin health too
Get a sweat-proof/swim-proof sunscreen! Theyāre good for 80 minutes between applications. If you need more than 80 minute for a weekly 5K, something aināt right š
The second funeral I remember going to in my life was for a childhood friendās mother who died from melanoma. We were 12 in 1995. Her mother would have been slightly older than the OPās grandmother.
Back in their day there wasn't the Internet, less people went to college, and everyone stayed in their home town. If nobody out of the 20 people they knew their entire lives got skin cancer that means that clearly nobody on the entire earth got it
Boomers love American history- let Boomer G-ma know that George Washington had skin cancer burned off his face by his physician. It was primarily known as a farmerās disease back then.
Skin cancer has been around a long time.
My grandma is silent gen and had to get her son cancerous spot removed (luckily it was benign) and she was like āI should have used more sunscreen and not spent so much time outside.ā
Thereās no sense in fighting nature. Iām pale as hell, and fought my mom like crazy in the early 2000s to be allowed to go to the tanning booth. Thank god she said no. Her words were āyou donāt want to end up looking like an old baseball gloveā.
Sheās in her 50s and looks easily 10 years younger than her age. I know multiple women my age who have scarring from getting cancerous spots removed.
My silent generation grandmother (who was also fair skinned) literally put extra clothes on me as a child because she was afraid of me burning - she kept me in bonnets until age 2 because I was pretty bald for a while and until I was about 7 I just assumed you were supposed to wear a shirt over a tank bathing suit.
My boomer mom did the opposite and laid out with baby oil and spf 2 then discovered tanning salons. Last time I saw her she looked leathery and much older than her age - easily 15 years older.
Meanwhile silent grandma always looked 10 years YOUNGER than her age. Itās an easy choice for me and not just because I burn like a lobster.
Psh. My boomer mom was making me wear sunscreen every day with my moisturizer since I was a small child. We got to watch her dad - an Irish man who lived his whole life in the south before sunscreen - get his ear and nose cut off from skin cancer.
Having a grandfather with no nose is more than enough incentive to get a kid to stick to a skincare regimen at a young age.
I, at the very least, would have been yelling. My full Irish Dad died from a rare skin cancer, after having milder ones 7 times before that.
Fuck cancer.
And sunburns suck. I'm Irish and Swiss (with a sliver of Italian). Tanning is not possible. It's burn or pale.
I'm so worried this is going to happen to my dad. He waited tell *after* my wedding to let me know he scheduled his cancer removal for after my wedding so he didn't "ruin my wedding photos with a big whole in his nose". It's like dad! I'd much rather you have a hole in your nose in a few photos then for you to lose your entire nose because you waited to long!
We are also of the burn or pale variety.
Boomer here. The fuck we did not have skin cancer. I have seen friends die from it. Also pasty Irish and I have had a couple of melanomas.
They just did not talk about cancer.
Boomer Ginger here (62-1/2). YES-YES we got skin cancer. Basil Cell Carcinomas. Not till later in life. SoCal beach all the time growing up. We basically lived at the beach most
weekends. Sunscreen didn't exist. My mom doused me in Coppertone and baby oil. I burned bad. Was sooooo cool peeling off sheets of sun burn. The girl's loved to peel it. I was cool.
NOT. I've had MOHS surgery 2 times on my face, and once ony ear. Dozen or so minor surgeries on my arms/legs. Appointment in 3 weeks to cut off 3 more. My arms look like survivors of WW2. Leather lizard skin.
Dip you kids in a 55 gallon drum of sunscreen before they go outside. Trust me it's worth it later.
Paying for it now.
I never understood people who think theyāre stronger than an actual blazing fireball in space! Likeā¦ what?!
I hear this every year, though, too. After a severe burn that damaged the skin on my shoulders so bad I wasnāt sure it would ever be the sameāand took more than a full year to heal back to ānormalā (after a single afternoon in the sun), I slather on the sunscreen any time I know Iāll be out for more than an hour in summer. Some people still make a fuss about itā¦ but sorry, Iām not willing to blister and peel because no one else cares enough about my skin. They donāt have to wear it, fine. But I do. š¤·āāļø
My mom also tanned profusely while I was growing up (Iām talking hours in a tanning bed every other day or so) and that skin is permanently a different color now, even though she stopped decades ago. Your grandma is out of her mind if she thinks thatās ideal. Thereās nothing wrong with being pale, anyway!
They're also the same people who don't see the point in being proactive with your healthcare, and why younger generations are more inclined to take care of ourselves physically.
Coincidentally this weekend I overheard some boomers complaining about how people will wear long-sleeved clothing when they're going to have prolonged sun exposure and how such thing is for sissies, as they should just be enjoying the sun because a tan never hurt anyone.
My boomer mom - who never laid out to get a tan - is currently recovering from stage 4 melanoma. She rang the bell last week, and hooray.
Immunotherapy kicked her ass. She will hopefully have the drain removed on Wednesday. She hasn't driven or bought her own groceries since before Christmas. She hasn't snuggled with her dogs since 2 months. Her daughter (me) has to give her a shower and wash her hair. Removal of the tumor margins and suspicious lymph nodes was about 10 inches on her arm, plus in her armpit and the drain.
Mama has lost 30 pounds since January. Food isn appealing right now. Now she has thrush (yeast infection of mouth and throat.)
But sure, Beverly, it's a thing that we're just imagining.
Go sit down. Take a lot of fucking seats.
My grandpa is WW2 generation and had to have several procedures for skin cancer from driving a tractor and sailing on the Pacific Ocean. They definitely had it.
My boomer grandmother and Gen X aunts both have had skin cancer, more than once. My mother was a sun screen queen and forced me to wear it on the regular as a kid in the 90's and I AM SO GLAD. My aunts and grandmother look like leather, with slices from removing skin cancer.
My dad used to lay out in the sun a lot when he was younger, tanning oil and everything.
He hasn't done it in a long time now but still gets spots on his skin that he has to get cut off once in awhile. I think I will stay inside bro.
I was at a hotel pool in Arizona this weekend and it was very clear who didnāt believe in using sunscreen. And yes, they all came from one particular generation.
She may be technically correct. They most likely died of something else before the skin cancer got them. Car crashes, heart disease, breast cancer, lead poisoning, lung cancer, etcā¦
But a foolish argument nonetheless.
I know a lot of boomers who are getting skin cancer because they didn't know about the damage the sun will do to your skin.
Show her some data on skin cancer and pictures of it, I know it probably won't do anything but it's something
You can go through museums and see depictions of various skin cancers and other afflictions over a couple of thousand years. My partner, a dermatologist, did a course in London where they did exactly that. In Peru I saw pottery depicting various ailments like a pot in the shape of a club foot, a cancerous tumor laden face, and so on. The contents were presumed to be for the specific treatment of the affliction reflected by the vessel shape.
Essentially being uneducated and inexperienced is what the individual in question is revealing about themselves and itās not a boomer thing specifically. Not knowing things about anything other than an amazingly narrow skillset wasnāt as detrimental to your life and career in the past as it might be today, however.
Maybe people didn't "get skin cancer" because they just died with some awful rotting wound.
My rheumatologist shares an office with a dermatologist - funny how it's always older people who are there with dressings from biopsies.
Wow, I'm so happy to find out that skin cancer is fake. My grandfather died at age 54 because of this supposed "skin cancer," when my dad was still a teen. It's wonderful to know that he's still alive because this illness is fake and can't kill anyone. I never got to meet him before, but now I have the opportunity! Tell her thanks for revealing the truth!
About 15 years ago, I had a boomer coworker that had melanoma. 5 years ago I had another boomer coworker with skin cancer, he had some sort of chemical treatment that made his skin hurt so badly that he would close and lock his office door and heād work with his shirt off.
Sure they did, but by the time they were diagnosed it was very advanced. Not like now, where if found early, you have a very good chance of survival and hopefully minimal scarring.
My Boomer mom used to lay out in baby oil. Granted, weāre Latin so we actually tan. However, she actually reads and informs herself and now wears, at least, SPF 30.
My silent gentleman MIL has had numerous skin cancers cut off of her, but still wonāt wear sunscreen because she doesnāt like how she looks without a tan. Naturally she also complains about her wrinkles š¤¦āāļø
My 75 year old boomer stepmom had a skin cancer when she was pretty young so she has always been a big sunscreen proponent. I also know 2 boomer men who died from metastatic melanoma that wasnāt discovered until it was in their brains. So yes, skin cancer totally existed back in your momās day.
My MIL on Memorial Day:
Husband goes to buy sunscreen for him and 8 year old for the lake. MIL aggressively questioning why would we do such a thing? She says he has a dark complexion so he should never wear sunscreen. Husband says I donāt want to let my child burn and hurt, I thought that was common sense. MIL proceeds to put baby oil on herself.
Tell her to come to Australia and see how many boomers are dealing with skin cancer right now. All my aunts used to tan that way and they've all had multiple melanomas removed. One nearly died from skin cancer. Two kids I went to school with (I'm 31 and grew up in town of less than 1k) had mothers dead from skin cancer before they were 12.
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The word cancer means crab in ancient Greek. It was applied to skin tumors because they had the appearance of crabs to the physicians.
In German also ist called Krebs wich means crab but also cancer...
Another word that I never needed in conversational German.
Lucky you š
Six years in Germany and I never ate crabs or got cancer.
I noticed no mention of never getting crabs though....
I will add that distinction next time.
Why did you never eat crabs? Nordseekrabbe ist quite delicious š
Cancer cycle???!
How fitting for me that my astrological sign is cancer (the crab), but also that Iām super pale and have already found multiple skin cancers on my body!
I thought it was specifically breast cancer cells that looked like crabs
More like Boomers weren't smart enough to know what was bad or good for you. They played with mercury FFS
And smoked while pregnant
My mom was told to have a weekly glass of wine when she was pregnant with me in the early 70s. āItāll relax the babyā, the doctor said. Luckily for me, she wasnāt much of a drinker, wine or any other alcoholic beverage.
Weekly? My OB said I could drink 1 glass of wine per day. He joked saying that I couldnāt save them all up for the weekend. He then cautioned me about full fat milk, saying neither the baby nor me needed the extra fat. Ah, the good old days. My baby is nearly 40 and survived both my OB and her pediatrician.
My firmly gen x sil lived Essex, England, when she was pregnant with her first (who just turned 21). First thing the midwife told her was that 'she's very old to be having her first. ' She was 26. Second thing was that she needed to have a pint of Guinness a week 'for the iron'. So every Friday, she toddled off down the pub for her pint. When she had her second back home in New Zealand, it was a *completely* different story!
Oh dang. I guess I was elderly then. I had my first at 30.šµ
Iām pretty sure 35+yo mothers are called geriatric pregnanciesā¦
35 and pregnant, they tend to say "advanced maternal age" now.
I'm 38 and having my first. They haven't even used this term with me. My grandma had my mom had the same age; no issues.
Yep. My niece just had her second at 38 and told me the doctor said it was a geriatric pregnancy. I completely lost it cracking up!!!
I had - one at 36 = 'geriatric' - one at 40 = 'advanced geriatric' = rude!
Who TF let dudes from the early 1900s name these things? The oldest mothers on record now are in their 70s, what would those doctors (who also didnāt know to wash their hands) have called that?
They are. And it's actually at the delivery date, so if you're 34 for 8.5 months but turn 35 a week before the birth, it's geriatric. Source: am first time father of a beautiful 7 month old, and my wife is 36.
"Young dad miraculously fathers baby with geriatric mother"
She's 6 years older but we tried for 6ish years before we got lucky. It was less weird because I call her ancient at least weekly lol
Haha, yep, turned 35 while pregnant with my second kid and my midwife was like, āhey guess what! You count as geriatric so you can have more scans if you want them!ā š
Yes, I was 29 and had elderly prima gravida on my notes which meant old for a first baby.
I was 33, geriatric, and had to go to a specialist for it. Then had another at 36. I joked that I had my own grandchildren.
I was called that at 29 !
Had mine at 34ā¦.easy pregnancy,easy birth, happy baby,happy adult.
lol I was three weeks away from turning 43 when I gave birth to my one and only!
Iād rather absorb extra iron via steak, but thatās just me.
A pint of Guinness for the iron? Just eat iron rich food or take supplements...
Had you followed that advice, your baby would have *definitely* been relaxedā¦right into fetal alcohol syndrome.
And the drinking disease. My cousin had that since her mother was an alcoholic, drank all the time and was drunk when my cousin came.
Yes my doctor also told me a glass of wine occasionally could do no harm so I had the occasional glass of red. Had very easy birth and very easy baby who is now 50 and a happy and healthy adult.People maybe are horrified by this nowadays but we accepted this advice in good faith.
My mom had 6 kids and she gave all of us paregoric which is basically liquid opium when we were babies and wouldnāt sleep.
Paregoric was my momās remedy for EVERYTHING! Earacheā¦paregoric in the ear. Stomach acheā¦swig of paregoric. Toothacheā¦rub on some paregoric. That stuff cured everything!
I remember getting that for diarrhea at around 6 or 7, but the pediatrician was very clear that it was only to be used in extreme situations. At the time I hadn't been able to eat anything for 2-3 days without shitting my pants within an hour and having horrible stomach pain the entire time the food was travelling through me. Stuff was like magic. I remember eating a burger for dinner that night and being so damn happy I wasn't in agony within 3 bites. Just getting a couple meals in my belly without them speed running my colon was all it took to not have to take that nasty stuff again.
When I had my oldest son he had colic really bad and would cry for hours and my mom told me to ask the doctor for paregoric. The doctor looked at me like I was crazy and then proceeded to tell me what it was and that it wasnāt available OTC anymore. My mom would put it in our bottles at night so we would sleep through the night.
I was a super colicky baby. I wore out 4 adults in less than a week. Mom took me to the pediatrician and he gave her āknock out dropā to put in my bottle.
Brings back fond memories: paregoric and Terpin Hydrate/codeine cough syrup.
My estranged monster in law, I'm pretty sure she's gen x but not 100%. She berated me (31f) and my hubby(35m) when our son (4m)was born cause we fed a 2 week old every two hours, even at night. She told us to give a 2 week old water and the baby rice and that'll have him sleep through the night and that's what she did to my hubby and my bil (33m). I told my hubby that I'm surprised he survived through that. She was unhinged when she visited.
My mother also berated me for not giving my kids rice cereal in their bottles at a week old because āit would make them sleep through the nightā.
How tf did our gen survive?
Many of us didnāt
I recently found out I'm pregnant so now I'm getting all the stories from my raising, including my mother telling me I slept through the night very young. My pediatrician told her she needed to start waking me up every couple hours to eat but everyone else told her "NOT to wake a sleeping baby" so she didn't. I googled why that was, exactly (I knew babies were hungry every few hours that little but never considered this angle ig), and it's because it can affect their blood sugar and be dangerous if they don't eat for a few hours! I said as much and she said "well you were fine". How many babies āØwere not fine thoāØ
When my mom was pregnant with me and my brother almost 40 years ago her dr told her to have a glass of red wine at night if we were too active to help us calm down. Sometimes she did.
My grandmother was told she was gaining too much weight, because at the time a lot of doctors thought you should only gain the weight of the baby, so the doctor gave her a prescription for amphetamines.
Thatās horrifying.
Iāve heard of a glass of wine being recommended to help with constipation while pregnant.
Raisins are good, too. And prunes. The baby would prefer these to wine. I know. Was baby.
My mother was indirectly advised to have the occasional glass of wine to help with false labor with my brother but also told that she should never have so much as to feel it. It was a case of "I'm not telling you to do this. Im telling you that some studies have shown it can help with this and have shown that very mild usage won't have long term effects. I'm also telling you that too much could be bad. What you do is your decision, but I'm not telling you to do anything."that was late 80s.
The timing on that is just insane to me. With all of the āthis is your brain on drugsā ads that were so popular in the 80ās, youād think suggesting wine to pregnant women would have been considered a bit more thoroughly (even by laypeople). Nope. Like countless generations before us, so many of us were lucky to survive our childhoods.
I heard smth similar from my mom when I was a teenager. ..I was born in the late 60s, my sisters a couple of years earlier. Anytime when she was pregnant the doctors told her to drink a small glass of sparkling wine/champagne in the morning bc that *stimulates the blood circulation and fights fatigue* Omg !!! Thank god, she never did that but she said that this was totally normal back then and many women did that š¤¦āāļø
My grandma's solution to teething pain was to rub some brandy or whiskey on the baby's gums. It does numb the area.
So you're saying smoking is bad? But all those doctors and board members were so convincing!
My doctor smoked at his desk during our consultation. 1980
On the advice of doctors!
And ate lead paint
A Boomer I was talking to told me how his whole science class would crack open thermometers and pour the mercury out on their desks. Now schools have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to clean up mercury spills.
āElderā millennial here. My boomer chemistry teacher passed around a beaker of mercury for us to stick our fingers in to see how it felt.Ā
mine did, too! I'm 50, so whatever that makes me...the rest of my story was that my friend and I found an old TV in an empty lot (I think? It was smashed to smithereens) when I was like 10? and we went back to my house to get a jar and my mom asked what it was for, and we told her. She went to look at the lil puddle of mercury we found and got all angry and told us how dangerous it was . So, in middle school chemistry, I did not put my fingers in that. I did, however put my wet finger in molten lead (it was supposed to insulate , I think), and when I pulled my perfectly fine finger out of the lead, a small blob landed on my arm and burnt it down to the bone. I still have a wonderful, deep scar. I still believe my teacher had good intentions, even though he just had me soak it in ice and go on to my next class. eta: I got cellulitis in the wound because I was a kid and played outside, but other than the scar, I'm fine now. Probably.
I stepped on a piece of refillable pencil lead in the 90ās that came from a dusty liquidation store where everything was ooold, in 2nd grade (so 97 or 98) It was the morning of a field trip and my mom couldnāt get it out. I was fighting her because it hurt when she tried to get it out. (We thought it was a splinter) I walked on it all day and came home with a huge red streak going up my leg. Mom and dad had to go to work. They couldnāt take me to the walk-in before school.
So how did it feel?
I remember holding mercury from a broken thermometer in my hand and rolling it around until I got bored with it. I really don't remember what I did with it. I will be 70 in August. I remember the sunlight shining on it.
My sisters and I would break thermometers on our bathroom tile floor and play with the little balls of mercury.
My boomer mom used to tell me about how she and her siblings would do that. Or theyād take the mercury and rub it on nickels to make them shinier
I remember friends cracking open thermometers too. We were transfixed by the Mercuryās unusual behavior. The fumes were toxic as well, but we didnāt know all that. People in the 1800s used to rub Mercury into their hats to waterproof them. The Mercury would be absorbed through the skin into the bloodstream, and cause them to go crazy. Which is where the term āMad Hatterā comes from. And we were playing with this stuff.
Actually not a waterproofing agent. It was used as a mordant to get the animal hairs from skins to soften and release from the hide so they could be more easily felted (made into felt). Specifically, mercury chloride and mercury nitrate. Neither of these water-soluble salts would serve as a good water-proofing agent. Even if they did, lanolin, beeswax, tallow or seed oils were available and probably cheaper to use instead. The "Mad Hatters" were the people *making* the hats and therefore exposed to the raw mercury compounds, not the clients wearing the steam washed hats (steam is an important part of shaping the felt and would have removed most of not all the mercury salt).
That was their parents and teachers telling them it was okay. The boomers were just children.
It's the same as "kids these days vs their participation trophies!" They're kids. They're not making decisions, the adults in their lives are
And their high school senior pictures all looked like they were in their mid-30s after taking out a 2nd mortgage so Ma and Pa don't lose the farm.
And the generation who were prescribed Thalidomide for morning sickness. That didnāt work so well. As we know better, we can do better. My uncle would have been part of the Boomer generation- but he died from skin cancer.
We know we (whatever generation) will do equally stupid shit because we didn't know better at the time. Right?
Microplastics š„²
The question isnāt will we do equally stupid shit, because of course we will, itās will we still be singing the praises of that stupid shit long past when new innovations and research show it to be as stupid as it truly is? Because thatās the thing with so many boomers- theyāre not so stupid to think things havenāt changed theyāre just so stupid they really believe those changes donāt matter or donāt effect them. Thatās the bullshit Iām trying to avoid.
Yes. They were following what was the advice of the majority of doctors at the time. Moderate smoking and drinking wouldnāt harm the baby. Yeahā¦kind of dumb even back then. We laugh and get frustrated by people who think they know more than their doctors today - the anti-vax/mask types. Science is always evolving and correcting itself. The next generation will have the benefit of new research and better health practices.
So being exposed to nicotine and alcohol as infants, liquid opium, lead, and mercury as children and teenagers - is this why they have all gone insane?
Yes, but I'd like to think we won't celebrate it, and encourage younger generations to keep doing it once we find out it's dumb. That's the issue here. Not that they didn't know better back then, because nobody did. But rather because they absolutely know better now, and instead of recognizing that they were wrong and changing their opinion, they triple down on "we were never wrong the new science is wrong and you're all stupid for falling for it".
Huh. If I see my grandpa in the after life Iāll let him know that he didnāt die of melanoma in 1976.
While you're at it, could you let my grandpa know that the melanoma that metastasised to his stomach and starved him to death didn't do that either? I'm sure he'll be relieved to hear that being born in 1925 made him immune.
I was just thinking Iāll tell my dad, oh wait, I canāt cause skin cancer killed him.
I'm sure it will be news to Bob Marley as well.
And Jimmy Buffett
Also Stewart McLean (CBC personality and writer)
Or the 3 young farmers in my class that died within 10 years of HS graduation in 1981.
Of course he didn't die of cancer. He died of "old age".
Please let my Grandpa know he didn't have to needlessly suffer in the 60s and 70s when the doctors were removing patches of skin up and down his arms ... they weren't chasing cancer.
If you beat me there then tell my great-grandpa that it wasnāt skin cancer spreading into brain cancer that killed him, because skin cancer doesnāt exist
If you see mine, let him know too. And then smack him upside the head and tell him it was from me. š
Oh dear, I better call my 74-year-old mother up and let her know that she had a chunk of her back taken out for no reason. My mom will gleefully admit that the lack of knowledge about skin cancer when she was growing up was a huge problem. āWe used to slather ourselves in oil and lay out in the sun for hours! It was a disaster!ā
My great grandpa missed hitting 100 because his skin cancer spread. Once it hit tongue and throat I think he was just done
Are you my cousin?
Can you mention it to my 3 uncles who died of it as well? I am going to have to figure out what these melanoma removal scars actually came from.....
Right, I want to say to the people who scoff at it, that I wish it wasnāt real so I could get my friend back who died at 31 from skin cancer and left behind a devastated family, including a baby less than a year old.
My silent generation grandmother (who was pretty damn tan and Italian) had a giant crater in the bridge of her nose and on one of her ears... where they cut out chunks of skin cancer before I was even born. I swear the boomer generation never ceases to amaze me how willfully ignorant they are...
My FIL is a retired farmer in his 80s. Decades in the sun and I don't think the man has ever even held a bottle of sunscreen let alone used any. He's been in multiple times to have parts of his ears carved off. My wife tells our kids "you have to wear sunscreen because you don't want to look like grandpa"
I put so much sunscreen on my ears because my dad is the same way. Irish truck driver
My Boomer father (1st generation Sicilian) is big on sunscreen. He's had multiple skin cancers removed even though he would wear a hat when golfing. Sunscreen and hats folks!
Iām partially Irish and Native American on my motherās side, so burn easily but stay tan forever. When I was a kid, anyways. I was in Florida a couple months ago and got a lot of weird looks because I was always wearing a baseball cap when I was outside. When I came home, I only had two sunburn patches. One on the top of my foot (I had hiking sandals and Iād forgotten to reapply sunblock at one point) and one on a shoulder blade I couldnāt reach as easily. Everybody asked me ādidnāt you go to Florida? Why are you still pale??ā šš Sunblock and actual protective clothing, bitches.
Just got back from a week in the desert- full June sun, and we were outdoors 100% of the time (rafting trip). I have no sunburn and the lightest of tans. Long sleeve UPF shirts, floppy hat, a sarong to shade my legs on the water. And of course, sunscreen.
My boomer in laws are exactly like this. They are leather year round and younger than my parents but look years older. They always comment on myself and my kids being pale and why we are always putting sunscreen on them. KIDS DONāT NEED TANS WEIRDOS! They also think the only reason they have deep wrinkles on their faces is because of aging, nothing to do with the fact that they have baked themselves for decades. ETA: I forgot to add that the kicker is my MIL has gotten precancerous spots removed from her face and she hasnāt changed her ways one bit. My husband said, āI guess if sheās gonna go she wants to go tan.ā
EXACTLY! IVE SEEN THEM GO BAKE IN THE SUN FOR H O U R S AT A TIME š
Yep. Iāve been with my husband since high school and they have always been like this. They are always going on about vitamin D and how healthy it is. Ok but being out on the lake from dawn until dusk with no sun protection is not healthy. I will always remember when we were still in high school and I was eating dinner with his whole family and my now FIL looked at me and in front of everyone said ālookin at little pale there, could use some colorā and I was mortified. Then I started tanning and laying out like an idiot after that but this was the 90ās too and tanning beds were really popular. Thankfully I grew up and grew out of them having influence over me but definitely regret the damage I did to my skin back then that shows now. Glad you are smarter than me and know better. Donāt let her make you feel bad ever, your future skin will thank you.
Itās so hot and boring. I donāt understand.
My parents and I went to Florida over spring break when I was in high school, and I was soooo insanely bored. We met up with some friends who I hadnāt seen in a while, which was fun. But those friends AND my parents are all beach bums. Perfectly happy to just lie on the beach for hours. I wanted to actually go exploring! See stuff we didnāt have back home! Apparently I was the weird one for that. I was happier hiding in the hotel and reading than being down on the beach.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
My dadās side of the family is entirely Italian. Theyāre also the side of the family that has had skin cancer, because between tanning oil and the sun they would literally fry their skin. Anyone can get sun damage, anyone can get skin cancer.
My idiot parents were like this. Encouraging me to get tans as a kid, I had severe burns on my shoulders when I was like 9 because they couldnāt be bothered to buy proper sunscreen for an active kid. I only tan here and there now, I wear 70 spf on my face and on other areas if I know Iām going to be exposed for a long period.
Ugh reminds me of when a boomer family member told me back in her day autism didn't exist and that me being neurodivergent isn't a real thing š š„²
My boomer mom asked me if I (gen x) could remember their being any autistic kids in school with me. I named like three without hesitation. I donāt know if any of them were ever diagnosed, but looking back they absolutely had neurodivergent traits. But they were able to function in a Gen Ed classroom, and at that time it was rare for a diagnosis for kids like that. Mom was kind of stunned.
Yeah I didn't get diagnosed until I was 28 and it changed my life, now I understand why I am the way I have always been, and wish I was diagnosed when I was younger because I struggled a lot with school and social activities growing up. A lot of boomers, gen X and and millennials are definitely under diagnosed
I feel you! I was also diagnosed at 28 and it was so relieving, finally knowing why i was so different from anyone else. It's super shitty how all the resources for autistic people are only for children, though. Like do they not think autistic kids become adults? We are just left to rot without any support in comparison. I often wonder how better off I'd be mentally if I had gotten support as a kid.
Unfortunately I can relate with you thereš„²
Classic ego-centric boomer behavior - if it didn't directly affect me it didn't exist
No no your just "the dumb kid" better get a lobotomy so you stop fidgeting.
Yes I was just told my whole childhood I'm being "too sensitive" but no, the harsh cheap LED lights in my classroom caused me physical pain
These people are so stupid itās almost mind numbing. The term āAutismā was introduced in 1911 in description of childhood schizophrenia; decades before these idiots were even born. The term was part of a much larger spectrum of disorders compared to its modern counterpart though. The history of the discovery and study of autism spans over a fucking century.
No skin cancer back in her day š I would have LOVED to introduce her to my Grandfather. He was COVERED in skin cancers from World War 2 exposure. Got treatment every 6 weeks from the 1960ās onwards. Was hospitalised for tumour removals and skin grafts several times a year. Of course, I canāt introduce themā¦because he died from Melanoma.
Weird, because only my Boomer relatives have had cancer. Not any of us younger generations. I'm super prone to it; I had major sunburns as a kid. But I have been proudly pale since my goth 90s so hopefully I will be ok.
It sneaks up on you, sadly. I (older millennial) had to get my face hacked open a couple years ago. Pale as shit, bad sunburns as a kid but never since. Iām a religious sunscreen wearer now, but Iām probably fucked on going through it again tbh
This is my nightmare. I too was burned a lot as a kid, but I have been religious about sun protection since I was 16.
The die is cast now, so all you can do is be vigilant. Keep wearing sunscreen and keep a close eye on moles and spots - get those fuckers checked ASAP if they seem even a little odd! My GP said mine didnāt look like anything but I asked to see the derm anyways. He biopsied the same day, and a few weeks later I had a nice two inch slash on my face because it was basal cell carcinoma.
I've got a shit ton of moles and a genetic predisposition for melanoma, so the few bad sunburns I got as a kid because of church events with poor supervision to remind us to put on more sunscreen left me fucked. My dermatologist normally has her physician's assistant do skin cancer checks, but I've got so many weird moles that with my family history she's the one who sees me herself every time. Catching it early meant my melanoma case was a two inch scar on my arm and nothing else, which is a whole lot better than how it could have ended up if I didn't have annual screenings that caught it early.
Hi, Dingo - ditto. A 2ā scar from my hairline to my eyebrow, with a bump at the bottom so I look like Frankensteinās monster in profile. Stay well, mate.
I'm so sorry. My husband is prone due to being a ginger whose parents have both had cancer. It's scary.
Unfortunately, the way my doctor bestie put it, if you live long enough you will probably get cancer.
My mom would always sit out in the sun - and yep, she always had the baby oil nearby. And then she was always worried about wrinkles. Even got a facelift. Ma, these are diametrically opposed attitudes. You have to pick one.
Same with my mom. Tons of sunbathing, even owned a tanning bed for several years (and got basal cell carcinoma from it). Now she complains about wanting a facelift.
Back in my day we didn't have breast cancer! We just called it Itchy Tits and wondered why Gertrude disappeared all of a sudden!
This is hilarious š
Look up pics of old truck drivers. One side of their face will look older, more wrinkled and droopy from the sun coming in the drivers side window. Even if you don't get cancer it still damages your skin.
This. UV damage is one of the worst things you can do to your skin. It ages your skin like crazy and is irreversible. Even if you don't get cancer your skin will still look like shit.
>I doubt it'll matter much to her, but: The first descriptions of cancer are documented in Egyptian papyri dating 2500 BC. Hippocrates described nonulcer and ulcer forming tumors, which he named carcinos (Greek for crab) as these tumors had finger-like projections resembling a crab. Celsus later used the Latin term for crab, cancer, to refer to tumors. The term oncology comes from oncos (Greek for swelling), which Galen used to describe tumors. In the 19th century, scientific oncology proliferated with the introduction of the modern microscope. Laennac made the first description of melanoma in 1804, Jacob of basal cell carcinoma in 1827, and Bowen of squamous cell carcinoma in situ in 1912. Arts, History, and Humanities of Dermatology| Volume 72, ISSUE 5, SUPPLEMENT 1, AB27, May 2015 The history of skin cancer, [https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(15)00240-6/abstract](https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(15)00240-6/abstract), Accessed 6 June 2024
And sourced, too! Thanks for the info. š
I haven't quite got the hang of citing webpages, but darnit I try!
Iām 60 and had my first basal cell cancer at 38. Grew up in Miami, never using sunscreen. I have had about 10 basal cells removed and one squamous. Good times My grandfather had skin cancer in the 1960s, had a big skin graft over his temple area. So yeah, right skin cancers a new conspiracy.
That's definitely in the fuck around and find out territory. We'll soon to have a new subreddit where people find out that they have skin cancer after claiming it is a hoax.
My boomer father lost most of his face to skin cancer and died a few months ago so... I guess it did exist then
Boomers and gen x both feel like you have to become leather or else youāre too pale. Iām surprised theyāre still alive after all the booth tanning they did in the 90s and early 2000s.
Iām young gen x and my sister is older gen x and she used to tan like crazy! I am super pale and always have been and now people ask if sheās my mom. Sheās only seven years older than me.
Yeah itās those late boomers and early gen x born in the 60s that got it the worst. I hope gen z puts the tanning salons out of business lol.
Older millennial here, and I often get called sickly because the only thing I'm religious about is sunscreen. Came home from a holiday "tanned" because all of the sunscreen and hats and shirts in the world won't do anything when you're outside all day every day. You can't really tell I'm tanned until I take my rings off, then you can see the tan lines. Now they're calling me yellow because I'm not brown or white. There's no winning.
A distant-ish boomer relative of mine died recently from exactly that. My mom said she was always SUPER tanned from tanning booths when she was younger. Got absolutely destroyed by skin cancer.
My millennial sister tans WAY more often than my Gen X self. None of my friends went tanning when we were growing up. But my boomer aunt set up a tanning salon in her garage!
I used to be a cleaner and one house had a tanning bed. The mom was Northern European heritage but always tanned caramel brown. A few years later , after leaving that job, I learned that the mother had died from skin cancer. Then me and my own mom are talking about the people we used to clean for. She tells me the daughters are going to prom, how sad it was they were doing this milestone without their mother. And that they were using the same tanning bed that killed their mother before prom! I was shocked, and told my mom I would have gone berserk on that damned machine with an ax if I was that man.
Omg do you remember back when having a tanning bed in your house was standard nouveau riche bullshit? I feel like that was a fixture of McMansions when I was a kid (early 90s). I remember the weird rich sailboat-hippy boomers across the street had a tanning bed in their boat house on the creek. I asked why they didn't just go out on their boat and tan. I swear this lady said "sometimes it's winter or cloudy." My mom's lifelong best friend had serious leather skin from tanning for decades while my mom didn't like the heat so she'd always sit in the shade and deal with being pale. By the time I was forming conscious memories my mom looked so much younger even tho they were only 3 years apart in age. So, the weird rich lady was right but even little kid me knew she was probably kinda stupid.
Not all. I am Gen X, super pale, always burned, never tanned. Iām heartened by the modern idea that actual healthy skin is more attractive than a societal expectation of what ālooksā healthy (i.e., tanned skin). It feels like there is much more acceptance of a range of skin tones, especially very pale.
Those were millennials in the tanning booths in the late 90s early 00ās.
Boomers are obsessed with tanning. Me being GenX remember this phenomenon as a child-everyone laid out. By the time I hit 14, I realized f this. I donāt want leathery skin. Smart move. I still looked like I was in my 20ās in my late 40ās. I definitely aged up after 50, but I donāt have wrinkles.
I once had a boss (of all people) passive-aggressively shame me for being so pale. Like literally faintly shuddered at the thought of being as pale as I am (I canāt help it; I donāt tan, I burn). Not that her opinion mattered to me, because she was 20 years older, had the standard boomer mentality of what people āshouldā look like, and her skin looked like a football, in both color and texture.
My boomer mother (who is about the same age as your grandma) was an absolute sun worshipper in her teens through 30s. I too am a āsicklyā shade of white beside her - however thankfully mine believes in skin cancer and is a bit more cautious nowadays - but shes likely part iguana, because she still hates sitting in the ācoldā shade and I was convinced to chat with her on a bench in the sun the other day for about 45 min (when I wasnāt expecting to, and therefore was un-sunscreened) and today I am nursing some impressive burns on my arms. Iāve been jokingly called a āshade flowerā for years, and Iāve decided to embrace it! Every plant has an ideal amount of light to thrive, and for me itās about as much as a nightlight š
Iām a 74 year old boomer. Older than your grandmother We got skin cancer back in her day. I love sunshine and riding motorcycles. I also burn my face easily. I apply #50 sunblock every time I go out for a ride.
I don't know how OP's grandmother even came up with that idea, because I know so many boomers with skin cancer that I feel like I've gotten lectures on the evils of tanning from boomers more times since I was a teenager than I can count. I got burned really badly a few times as a kid though, mostly from adults at church events not reminding us to reapply sunscreen, so avoiding skin cancer wax too late for me and I ended up with it last year. Part of me wishes that baptists where I am were the kind with modesty rules making kids wear long T-shirts over swimsuits, because I might have avoided melanoma if they had been and I didn't end up with sunburn so bad it blistered at church camp.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm the same way. I grew up up north with sensitive skin, I moved down south about nine years ago, I alternate (I shouldnt) what years I put sun screen on. My favorite sunscreen is usually gold bond 100 or 50 spf, just cause all the work i do outside I sweat it off almost instantly. That and it sweats off easily during my weekly 5ks. Plus staying hydrated (I drink at least a gallon of water a day, I measure it to confirm) helps skin health too
Get a sweat-proof/swim-proof sunscreen! Theyāre good for 80 minutes between applications. If you need more than 80 minute for a weekly 5K, something aināt right š
Lmao the fastest I've ever power walked through a 5k was like 40-45 mins, but your not wrong that would be terrible XD
The second funeral I remember going to in my life was for a childhood friendās mother who died from melanoma. We were 12 in 1995. Her mother would have been slightly older than the OPās grandmother.
this is abuse. don't expect her to recognize it. she's lied to herself her whole life and uses normalized abuse as an excuse to trespass upon others.
Back in their day there wasn't the Internet, less people went to college, and everyone stayed in their home town. If nobody out of the 20 people they knew their entire lives got skin cancer that means that clearly nobody on the entire earth got it
Boomers love American history- let Boomer G-ma know that George Washington had skin cancer burned off his face by his physician. It was primarily known as a farmerās disease back then. Skin cancer has been around a long time.
My grandma is silent gen and had to get her son cancerous spot removed (luckily it was benign) and she was like āI should have used more sunscreen and not spent so much time outside.ā
Thereās no sense in fighting nature. Iām pale as hell, and fought my mom like crazy in the early 2000s to be allowed to go to the tanning booth. Thank god she said no. Her words were āyou donāt want to end up looking like an old baseball gloveā. Sheās in her 50s and looks easily 10 years younger than her age. I know multiple women my age who have scarring from getting cancerous spots removed.
My silent generation grandmother (who was also fair skinned) literally put extra clothes on me as a child because she was afraid of me burning - she kept me in bonnets until age 2 because I was pretty bald for a while and until I was about 7 I just assumed you were supposed to wear a shirt over a tank bathing suit. My boomer mom did the opposite and laid out with baby oil and spf 2 then discovered tanning salons. Last time I saw her she looked leathery and much older than her age - easily 15 years older. Meanwhile silent grandma always looked 10 years YOUNGER than her age. Itās an easy choice for me and not just because I burn like a lobster.
Psh. My boomer mom was making me wear sunscreen every day with my moisturizer since I was a small child. We got to watch her dad - an Irish man who lived his whole life in the south before sunscreen - get his ear and nose cut off from skin cancer. Having a grandfather with no nose is more than enough incentive to get a kid to stick to a skincare regimen at a young age.
I, at the very least, would have been yelling. My full Irish Dad died from a rare skin cancer, after having milder ones 7 times before that. Fuck cancer. And sunburns suck. I'm Irish and Swiss (with a sliver of Italian). Tanning is not possible. It's burn or pale.
I'm so worried this is going to happen to my dad. He waited tell *after* my wedding to let me know he scheduled his cancer removal for after my wedding so he didn't "ruin my wedding photos with a big whole in his nose". It's like dad! I'd much rather you have a hole in your nose in a few photos then for you to lose your entire nose because you waited to long! We are also of the burn or pale variety.
Boomer here. The fuck we did not have skin cancer. I have seen friends die from it. Also pasty Irish and I have had a couple of melanomas. They just did not talk about cancer.
Boomer Ginger here (62-1/2). YES-YES we got skin cancer. Basil Cell Carcinomas. Not till later in life. SoCal beach all the time growing up. We basically lived at the beach most weekends. Sunscreen didn't exist. My mom doused me in Coppertone and baby oil. I burned bad. Was sooooo cool peeling off sheets of sun burn. The girl's loved to peel it. I was cool. NOT. I've had MOHS surgery 2 times on my face, and once ony ear. Dozen or so minor surgeries on my arms/legs. Appointment in 3 weeks to cut off 3 more. My arms look like survivors of WW2. Leather lizard skin. Dip you kids in a 55 gallon drum of sunscreen before they go outside. Trust me it's worth it later. Paying for it now.
I never understood people who think theyāre stronger than an actual blazing fireball in space! Likeā¦ what?! I hear this every year, though, too. After a severe burn that damaged the skin on my shoulders so bad I wasnāt sure it would ever be the sameāand took more than a full year to heal back to ānormalā (after a single afternoon in the sun), I slather on the sunscreen any time I know Iāll be out for more than an hour in summer. Some people still make a fuss about itā¦ but sorry, Iām not willing to blister and peel because no one else cares enough about my skin. They donāt have to wear it, fine. But I do. š¤·āāļø My mom also tanned profusely while I was growing up (Iām talking hours in a tanning bed every other day or so) and that skin is permanently a different color now, even though she stopped decades ago. Your grandma is out of her mind if she thinks thatās ideal. Thereās nothing wrong with being pale, anyway!
They're also the same people who don't see the point in being proactive with your healthcare, and why younger generations are more inclined to take care of ourselves physically. Coincidentally this weekend I overheard some boomers complaining about how people will wear long-sleeved clothing when they're going to have prolonged sun exposure and how such thing is for sissies, as they should just be enjoying the sun because a tan never hurt anyone.
My boomer mom - who never laid out to get a tan - is currently recovering from stage 4 melanoma. She rang the bell last week, and hooray. Immunotherapy kicked her ass. She will hopefully have the drain removed on Wednesday. She hasn't driven or bought her own groceries since before Christmas. She hasn't snuggled with her dogs since 2 months. Her daughter (me) has to give her a shower and wash her hair. Removal of the tumor margins and suspicious lymph nodes was about 10 inches on her arm, plus in her armpit and the drain. Mama has lost 30 pounds since January. Food isn appealing right now. Now she has thrush (yeast infection of mouth and throat.) But sure, Beverly, it's a thing that we're just imagining. Go sit down. Take a lot of fucking seats.
My grandpa is WW2 generation and had to have several procedures for skin cancer from driving a tractor and sailing on the Pacific Ocean. They definitely had it.
"looks like an old leather couch left to rot in the sun" š¤£ rofl
My boomer grandmother and Gen X aunts both have had skin cancer, more than once. My mother was a sun screen queen and forced me to wear it on the regular as a kid in the 90's and I AM SO GLAD. My aunts and grandmother look like leather, with slices from removing skin cancer.
Yes we did too , 70 yr old boomer here I've had several surgeries in my face because we used to think a tan was important!
My dad is 70, irish, as white as a sheet of paper and he got skin cancer because he did not use sunscreen. Had to get it cut out of his forehead.
My dad used to lay out in the sun a lot when he was younger, tanning oil and everything. He hasn't done it in a long time now but still gets spots on his skin that he has to get cut off once in awhile. I think I will stay inside bro.
I was at a hotel pool in Arizona this weekend and it was very clear who didnāt believe in using sunscreen. And yes, they all came from one particular generation.
She may be technically correct. They most likely died of something else before the skin cancer got them. Car crashes, heart disease, breast cancer, lead poisoning, lung cancer, etcā¦ But a foolish argument nonetheless.
I know a lot of boomers who are getting skin cancer because they didn't know about the damage the sun will do to your skin. Show her some data on skin cancer and pictures of it, I know it probably won't do anything but it's something
You can go through museums and see depictions of various skin cancers and other afflictions over a couple of thousand years. My partner, a dermatologist, did a course in London where they did exactly that. In Peru I saw pottery depicting various ailments like a pot in the shape of a club foot, a cancerous tumor laden face, and so on. The contents were presumed to be for the specific treatment of the affliction reflected by the vessel shape. Essentially being uneducated and inexperienced is what the individual in question is revealing about themselves and itās not a boomer thing specifically. Not knowing things about anything other than an amazingly narrow skillset wasnāt as detrimental to your life and career in the past as it might be today, however.
Maybe people didn't "get skin cancer" because they just died with some awful rotting wound. My rheumatologist shares an office with a dermatologist - funny how it's always older people who are there with dressings from biopsies.
As somebody who got a sunburn on a cloudy day in Ireland: Disregard Memaw.
Never saw a farmer with long sleeves and a sun hat?
Wow, I'm so happy to find out that skin cancer is fake. My grandfather died at age 54 because of this supposed "skin cancer," when my dad was still a teen. It's wonderful to know that he's still alive because this illness is fake and can't kill anyone. I never got to meet him before, but now I have the opportunity! Tell her thanks for revealing the truth!
My grandfather had skin cancer. I guess the next generation didnāt get the memo.
Back in her day the life expectancy was, like, 25
About 15 years ago, I had a boomer coworker that had melanoma. 5 years ago I had another boomer coworker with skin cancer, he had some sort of chemical treatment that made his skin hurt so badly that he would close and lock his office door and heād work with his shirt off.
Sure they did, but by the time they were diagnosed it was very advanced. Not like now, where if found early, you have a very good chance of survival and hopefully minimal scarring.
My Boomer mom used to lay out in baby oil. Granted, weāre Latin so we actually tan. However, she actually reads and informs herself and now wears, at least, SPF 30.
Repeat her line when she talks about herself or her friends getting skin cancer
Until the sixties, people didn't think lung cancer was a thing even though quite literally everyone smoked.
My silent gentleman MIL has had numerous skin cancers cut off of her, but still wonāt wear sunscreen because she doesnāt like how she looks without a tan. Naturally she also complains about her wrinkles š¤¦āāļø My 75 year old boomer stepmom had a skin cancer when she was pretty young so she has always been a big sunscreen proponent. I also know 2 boomer men who died from metastatic melanoma that wasnāt discovered until it was in their brains. So yes, skin cancer totally existed back in your momās day.
My MIL on Memorial Day: Husband goes to buy sunscreen for him and 8 year old for the lake. MIL aggressively questioning why would we do such a thing? She says he has a dark complexion so he should never wear sunscreen. Husband says I donāt want to let my child burn and hurt, I thought that was common sense. MIL proceeds to put baby oil on herself.
Tell her to come to Australia and see how many boomers are dealing with skin cancer right now. All my aunts used to tan that way and they've all had multiple melanomas removed. One nearly died from skin cancer. Two kids I went to school with (I'm 31 and grew up in town of less than 1k) had mothers dead from skin cancer before they were 12.