Episode: 2075
Title: HPR2075: Skin cancer
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2075/hpr2075.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 14:00:47

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This in HPR episode 2007 to 5 entitled Kin Cancer, it is hosted by Clinton Roy and in about
6 minutes long.
The summer is my recent experience with Kin Cancer and a primer on UV.
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This is a very personal podcast discussing minor surgery.
If that sort of stuff makes you cringe at all, this may not be the recording for you.
I should also point out that I'm not a medical professional.
You should not take this recording as medical advice.
If you have any concerns about your skin, seek professional medical advice.
I'm a very white person living in Queensland, Australia.
Our state has amongst the highest rate of skin cancers in the world.
I believe we're in a tussle with New Zealand for the first place at the moment.
There are two main types of skin cancer, melanoma and non melanoma.
The non melanoma type is slow growing and rarely spreads to other parts of the body, while
melanoma is fast growing and spreads to the rest of the body.
Both of my parents have had multiple lesions excised, so something like this was always
on my mind.
We live in a sunny, subtropical environment.
The sort of clothing you'd want to wear for comfort is light, breezy and not covering
much skin.
Exactly the wrong sort of clothes you'd need to wear to protect yourself from ultraviolet,
UV rays that help cause skin cancer.
According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology FAQ, the per capita risk of skin cancer in
Australia is 10 times higher than America and 60 times higher than the UK.
The UV scale rarely gets above 8 in the UK.
Embrysman, the UV scale is above 8 for roughly 8 months of the year.
There are a lot of variables when it comes to UV.
Cloud cover is probably the most important.
The thing that I can't stress enough is that heat and UV are not correlated.
You can definitely be exposed to lots of UV when it's cold.
Seeing New Zealand, they're much more south, much more cold and have more exposure due
to the ozone hole.
Another example is snow.
UV will bounce off the snow and back at you.
The link between skin cancer and UV is quite strong.
25 to 99% of skin cancers are caused by excess sun exposure.
So with all that history, I started getting yearly skin checks a couple of years ago.
I've had a couple of skin checks when I was very young, and now that I'm more advanced
in years, I wanted something less ad hoc.
Someone working for one such organisation gave a talk at one of the user groups I attended,
and I made an appointment with MallMap.
It's a full-on procedure where your entire body is photographed.
And each mole, freckle, bump and lump that is of possible concern is photographed from
a few centimetres off the skin, and with the magnification lens sitting right on top of
the mole.
I have some near 200 spots on myself that are of interest, so my follow-up appointments
take about two and a half hours to go over all these spots, plus looking for new ones.
The hope is that, by doing this close to yearly, small changes in all these spots won't
go unnoticed, and we can get on top of any cancers early.
Interestingly, the spot that was actually a problem was a new one.
So under a year old, and was hiding underneath my beard, so in future I'm definitely going
to have to have my skin checked, clean shaven.
The other thing I want to communicate is that early detection is key.
All the skin cancers have a 90% plus survival rate, at 5 years, if caught early enough.
This does potentially mean that a yearly check is not enough, but it's already proven
it's worth to me.
MallMap only does photography of spots and visual diagnosis.
It does not do any treatment or biopsies or exisions, therefore it has no self-interest
in recommending treatment on borderline cases.
MallMap sprang out of a University of Queensland project, which is my alma mater.
After receiving the diagnosis, Voron online form, secured with a second factor sent to
my phone, and penicking a favourite, I contacted my regular doctor's practice.
We call them general practitioners in Australia, I'm sure they call different things elsewhere.
For an appointment with a GP who had experience with skin cancers.
In Queensland, most medical centres will have at least one doctor with experience in
this area.
As it turns out, my regular GP has such experience, and I got an appointment for the following
week.
I wasn't really sure what to expect from my GP appointment, but I was mostly expecting
to get the diagnosis confirmed, and I either get sent to a specialist to deal with it
or organise another appointment at the GP.
What actually happened was it took all of five minutes for my doctor to confirm the diagnosis.
One workout, he had time in his schedule, and there was a nurse free to exercise the
legion straight away.
I was given a local anaesthetic, so I felt no pain whatsoever, but you still feel the doctor
pulling on your skin up, down, left and right, so that the complete legion can be removed,
as well as a small amount of surrounding skin in case the cancer has spread.
Here I should mention that melanoma spread very fast, and when they are exercised up to
a centimeter of skin may need to be removed, whereas for non melanomic, a millimeter or
so is good enough.
I got four switches put in, they stayed for a week, we have a long Easter break in Australia,
so I ended up being closer to a week and a half.
I had no problems, my scar healed up quickly and nicely.
Now a couple of months later, there's a little redness along the scar line, but that's
about it.
So, the takeaways, UV is not correlated to heat, and get a lot of UV exposure in cold environments.
If you're travelling through a high UV area, such as Australia, take precautions, close
that cover a lot of your skin, hat, some glasses and sunscreen.
If you live in a high UV area, get your skin checked regularly.
Also, keep an eye on your own skin, use a diary to record any new bumps, lumps, spots,
etc.
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