If you live in the northern hemisphere, we are fully into the fall season. In the southern hemisphere, they are enjoying spring, and looking forward to the upcoming summer. To maximize daylight hours, we turn our clocks ahead one hour each spring, and turn the clocks back one hour each fall. However, this has become a bit of a debate in Australia, as Queensland Premier Peter Beattie is digging in his heels, locking his knees, and crossing his arms against his chest in refusing to follow fellow countrymen in Western Australia when it comes to considering the policy of instituting daylight saving time . Beattie is well-intentioned but ill-informed in his concern that the extra hour of light might increase the already high risk of skin cancer in Queensland. Adding an extra hour at the end of the day -- or the beginning of the day -- depending on how you want to view it, will not increase skin cancer risks resulting from excessive exposure to sunlight. The hours of the day when the sun is most damaging, and most dangerous in increasing skin cancer risks, is the middle of the day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. According to The Skin Foundation , to reduce skin cancer risks, we need to protect ourselves year-round by staying out of the sun during peak hours of 10a.m. to 4p.m., by wearing a broad-spectrum sunscreen with a sun protection factor SPF 15 or higher, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and UV-blocking sunglasses, avoiding the use of tanning parlors and artificial tanning devices, keeping newborns out of the sun, teaching children good sun-protective practices, examining skin from head-to-toe once a month, having a professional examination annually, and avoiding sunburn. For more information about skin cancer myths and fact, read Skin cancer myths debunked by dermatologists . Read     Permalink     Email this     Linking Blogs     Comments

Filed under: Breast Cancer , Blogs , Cancer Survivors , Survivor Spotlight Almost five years later, the memory is still as vivid as if it were happening now as I tell you that while showering, I discovered a lump in my breast. My hand stopped, my breath caught, and my stomach clenched in terror. Instinctively, I knew I was in trouble. After mammogram, ultrasound, biopsy and the first of three surgeries, the diagnosis of breast cancer was not the most optimistic one. My lobular breast cancer had spread beyond the breast into lymph nodes -- and perhaps elsewhere not yet clearly detected. I would spend the next four years peering over my shoulder, wondering if the shadow of death would visit me with another cancer diagnosis, and if so, where would it settle in this time. If I ate pizza topped with jalapenos for that extra kick of flavor and got a stomach ache, I wondered -- had cancer spread to my liver? If I spent a day met with seemingly endless frustrations and annoyances and got a headache -- had the cancer spread to my brain? While there is nothing rational about these leaps to a cancer conclusion based on evidence suggesting I suffered from logically explainable modern life maladies that antacid or aspirin might easily cure, for the newly-diagnosed surviving breast cancer, it is not uncommon for the mind to immediately race to an impending cancer-based doom for every day aches and pains. I am here to tell you that for the first few years it will be quite normal to have totally unreasonable fears. Not willing to subject myself to this screeching fingernails on the blackboard fear without finding something to muffle the sound, I began creating personal rituals that suggested hope and affirmed life. With each one I was stating the value of my life and staking my claim to my future. For each woman, the personal rituals will be different. Here are a few I created that might give you some ideas for your own: Get down in the dirt. Feel the earth. In the spring and summer, I make time to garden each morning. In the fall and winter, I tend houseplants and kitchen herbs. Planting a seed or tending a plant is one of the most hopeful of acts. I sit on the riverbank and allow myself to become mesmerized by the flowing waters of the river. I go on nature hikes. More than once I have sprawled out on the ground and felt the earth underneath me. If you choose to do this, and I suggest you do try this at least once, it might be best done in the park or backyard because if you lay down, say, in the front yard, someone might call 911 concerned they are witnessing a woman passed out on her front lawn. Make new moon wishes. No, I do not believe the moon has magical powers, but using the timing of a new moon is a way of remembering to make my list, and to add to it each month. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was certainly not done living. There were things I wanted to accomplish, places I wanted to see, knowledge I wanted to explore, milestones I had not marked, finish lines I had not crossed, children who needed my mothering still, grandchildren to look forward to -- but I had never sat and wrote out any of these desires in detail. There is something about getting it down on paper that makes ideas and desires more real. I began making my list. Each month I keep adding to my list. When something on my list happens, I cross it off. Making a list seems to make more things happen. There is magic in that. Start a scrapbook. I stopped and imagined what my perfect life would look like and started drawing pictures of it and cutting out pictures to make collages on each page of the scrapbook. Who am I in my perfect life? Where am I? What am I doing? Who is with me? I add inspirational quotes and personal notations on each page. Any time during the month when I find a picture in a magazine or on the internet or stumble across a meaningful quote that appeals to me, I keep a file to store them until it is time to work on my scrapbook. I work on my scrapbook every full moon. Same principle of reminder and habit of writing my wish list at the new moon. In addition, paying attention to the phases of the moon has helped to reconnect me to the natural cadence and rhythm of nature and time. Honoring myself. Feeling gratitude. When someone tells me no, I look for a yes and walk towards it. This is an act of valuing myself. When someone tells me it cannot be done, I say I am going to go ahead and try. I do not allow myself to be discouraged. This is believing in myself. If someone hurts me, I say ouch. I am an advocate of my emotional well-being. When I first wake up, before I get out of bed, I make a quick mental note of five things I am grateful for before I have a chance to think too much about it. Not surprisingly, the list is primarily the people in my life I love and the fact I woke up. Start a savings account. I know this sounds silly, but having a savings account is a message to myself that I expect to be around for awhile. In the first two years of my breast cancer diagnosis, if a item of clothing became threadbare, I did not buy any clothing to replace it. I did not make any plans beyond the immediate month. I have gotten over that. Now, I can see myself thirty years ahead as a spritely woman with shocking white hair and a twinkle in the eye who lives in a cottage, tends her cottage garden, takes leisurely walks, enjoys visits from children, grandchildren and great-grand children, tells great stories, writes books, and travels when the road beckons. In fact, I have already started to have fun investing in my vision of what my future looks like with -- what else -- a blog about cottage life --a fluid expanding virtual act of my personal expressions of hopefulness. Earlier on, I discovered Rob Brezsny's Pronoia -- the opposite of paranoia and fear -- that suggests adopting a perspective and belief that the whole world is conspiring to shower you with blessings. Expect blessings. Permalink     Email this     Linking Blogs     Comments