Jimmy Buffett’s death from skin cancer a warning to aging Florida beach kids | Mark Lane
Floridians have reacted to news of Jimmy Buffett’s death with shock, by putting everything on the “Songs You Know by Heart” album on heavy rotation and by calling dermatologist offices.
When somebody who was the exemplar of Florida lifestyle, attitude and yes, even fashion, who has been the background soundtrack in waterfront bars here since the 1970s, dies of a disease associated with sun exposure, it can make a shore dweller take stock. That spot on your shoulder, is it really just a big freckle?
Buffett died of Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare form of skin cancer. Like all skin cancers, ultraviolet light exposure is a big risk factor. And as a performer who celebrated life on the water and by the water, Buffett had a full lifetime of days out in the sun.
“I’m back to livin’ Floridays. Blue skies and ultraviolet rays,” as he sang.
Merkel cell cancer is rare. Skin cancer overall isn’t. It’s the most common form of cancer. Almost 8,000 people died last year just from its more common variety, melanoma, according to the National Cancer Institute. Melanoma accounted for 5% of all new cancer cases. [https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/melan.html]
More: How to prevent skin cancers like Merkel cell carcinoma that claimed life of Jimmy Buffett
More: Locals mourn passing of Jimmy Buffett who died Friday at the age of 76
As a former red-haired person prone to sunburn, who grew up beachside in the Sun Exposure State, I did not need another warning.
I used to regularly drive my father, who loved boating, fishing, snorkeling and scuba diving, to dermatologists and surgeons to remove chunks from his back to fight his reoccurring melanomas. And once a year, I go to the dermatologist myself, expecting a clean bill of health only to see the doctor once again reach for the liquid nitrogen can and go to work on a new precancerous spot I never noticed before.
I prefer noncancerous spots to precancerous, but given the available options, precancerous is second-best, and I’m OK with that. Caught it again. See you next year.
Over the years, my beachwear has evolved from just swim trucks to swim trunks with T-shirt, then to swim trunks, long-sleeved shirt and cap. Now it stands at swim trunks, long-sleeve SPF 60+ shirt, gaiter, and wide-brimmed hat. On my bicycle, doing yard work and sometimes even when hiking, I often wear gloves.
And I see friends’ fishing pictures on social media and increasingly, they are holding fish aloft while similarly wrapped up with ever-larger brimmed hats, gaiters, long sleeves, gloves, big wrap-around shades and sun-hoods. Sunwear that looks like something the Invisible Man would wear while boating.
Buffett and I are of a generation that had hit Florida beaches and waterways with cut-offs and just maybe a smear of zinc oxide over the nose. Most sunscreens through the 1970s — marketed then as “suntan lotions,” emphasis on the tan — were pretty rudimentary. More moisturizer than sunblock. They had single-digit SPFs, but the number wasn’t usually printed big on the bottles until the 1980s.
The Food and Drug Administration didn’t regulate sunscreens until 1978. SPF 30 wasn’t advertised on bottles until around the 1990s.
One more thing we didn’t know about back in our Floridays as beach kids. And now we’re having to be more careful.
Celebrity deaths hit us even though we never met the person. They tell us our familiar world is receding, that we get no more encores, and we all share the same susceptibilities to disease, accident and misfortune no matter how famous. (Well, all of us except for Keith Richards.)
All you can do is put the music on another time and make an appointment to see a doctor.
You might think you don’t need to, but if you enjoyed a few decades of Floridays, it would likely be a good idea.
Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His email is [email protected].
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Mark Lane: Beach kids grown old warned by Buffett’s death
