The Sun
I've known Saul Orr since our school days together but never really warmed to him as a person. He is bright, even brilliant, but an abrasive, over-confident sort of chap. Some say he is arrogant enough to consider himself the centre of the universe. When younger, he was a large, red-haired and undeniably handsome chap and girls used to wilt in his presence. Love rivals were often just left in the shade. Being fair-skinned though, his endless and futile pursuit of a bronze tan in the Caribbean led to him attending me again today. The years of hatless baking under a scorching sun had left his great dome of a head pockmarked and cratered, ironically rather like the surface of the moon. Multiple basal and squamous cell skin cancers have arisen and Dr Burns at the Dermatology department and myself continue to see him monthly to freeze or remove the latest suspicious lesions. His ears have been particularly badly affected and the tops were removed through necessity by the plastic surgeons. Today, as every other day and rather self-consciously, Saul has got his hat on (hooray!) but it really is a case of too little, too late. The damage has been done. Understandably, he is getting a little fed up with the never-ending need for treatment and the only solace he has is that we've never detected the worst skin cancer of all, malignant melanoma. This particularly nasty tumour is becoming ever more common. Several times each week patients present me with pigmented skin lesions and query whether they are turning malignant. It is said that only one in a million moles undergoes this change and most serious skin tumours arise from previously normal skin. Some individuals have so many moles that giving reassurance or even remembering their distribution and nature is practically impossible. For this reason, larger hospitals use digital scanning cameras and patients are invited annually for total body imaging. Computerized comparative analysis is far more efficient at detecting subtle changes than we are, and earlier intervention can occur.
The sun was considered by the ancient Greeks to be one of seven planets, hence the days of the week and their names. It is the source and sustainer of life. I do not mean this in a reverential or religious way. Some peoples, such as the Aztecs, treated it as a deity but there are still plenty of sun-worshipers in our temperate climate. On a warm summer's day our public parks and beaches are full of scantily-dressed people lying about until they are as red as lobsters. It seems, in our rather unpredictable climate, people must grab a tan when, and as fast as, they can. Ours is an image-counts-for-everything culture and glowing tans are perceived as adding to one's beauty. Dark-skinned races are spared such shallowness and are fortunate enough to be hardly ever subject to skin cancers. I get heated about very few things but I am dead against sunbeds and salons. They are highly dangerous items and facilities and are undoubtedly contributing greatly to the exponential rise in skin cancers in this country. I recall one bride-to-be who felt it necessary to top up her tan before her big day. She popped round to a salon, donned the supposedly protective goggles, stripped off and promptly fell asleep. She rather resembled a beetroot on the day, save for the two white discs for eyes. The Best Man could not resist comments about sightings of the rare but cuddly red panda. Her tears counted for little compared to the considerable damage and aging her skin had suffered.
The sun is a star, the nearest one to us, and sits at the centre of the solar system. It is composed of chiefly hydrogen and helium, so it is really gas rather than solid. It is inconceivably hot, of course, but within its structure temperatures vary some 2,000-fold. As every stargazing school pupil knows; planets, asteroids, meteorites and comets orbit the sun. Amazingly, its mass is 99.8% of the entire solar system and it is the equivalent in volume to a million Earths. At a modest 93 million miles, we are only the third closest planet, which is perhaps just as well when you consider the temperatures on the closer and more distant ones. The boffins calculate that the sun has been in existence for 4.5 billion years and has approximately the same again to go before the lights finally go out. So relatively speaking, like Saul and myself, it is somewhat middle-aged.
An excess of sun, from a health point of view, is invariably bad but in moderation is essential. Saul Orr himself would now readily agree to such moderation and the use of sun creams and protective clothing. I zapped his scalp again. He replaced his hat and touched the brim as he departed, until the next time.