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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-02-15 Daily Xml
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Skin Cancer

Ms COOK (Fisher) (15:20): I rise today to inform the house about the impact of skin cancer in our community, and will share a personal story and also highlight some fantastic work being done in the community to help stop the tragic loss of life that occurs as a consequence.

I grew up on the lovely southern beaches and spent many long days at Christies, Porties (which is Port Noarlunga) and Moes (Moana). I lived at Morphett Vale and rode my bike, and on my trip to the beach I used to gather more people in the peloton, more friends. We made it to the beach and then we would rub ourselves with oil of various concoctions when Reef Oil was far too expensive for our pockets—cooking oil, baby oil—and just absolutely fry. Very dangerous behaviour.

I went to school with a dear friend of mine called Nicky Kerr, who lived at Seaford, and we rekindled our friendship as intensive care nurses at Flinders Medical Centre. We were both really outdoor girls and she was from an outdoors kind of family. Her father—and she was a daddy's girl as well—Terrence Wayne Smallwood, was a fifth generation Australian with fair hair, blue eyes, fair skin, a target for the sun in which he grew up and with an unquenchable love for the beach and the great outdoors.

He spent most of his childhood at the beach during summer and on the footy field during winter. He loved his footy, loved sport, loved a kick and a catch. Despite that, he always said that his greatest sporting achievements were realised on the beach. He was a surf lifesaver and joined the club in his early teens. He spent every available moment practising his craft and years later trained and competed in the March Past. His surf lifesaving career spanned greater than 45 years. He is a surf lifesaving club, state, Australian and world champion in his craft. He is also an Australian skin cancer statistic.

Being the way he was, pale with blonde hair, he also suffered from baldness by his late 20s. He did adopt sun smart policies as they emerged, but by that stage he had already endured far too many long hours in the sun. Later in life, in 2008, he discovered a small, swollen lump on his head and was diagnosed with melanoma in his 60s. He had that removed and had a small skin graft, but almost a year to the day a small pimple appeared on the graft on his head.

He said it had been there a few days and all would be okay, 'Terry will be fine,' but his daughter insisted he ring the doctor urgently. He was shocked to discover that this pimple was, in fact, a regrowth of the melanoma. This time the melanoma had metastasised into his lymph nodes, brain and lungs and his diagnosis of metastatic melanoma was terminal. As friends we did all we could for Terry and our dear friend Nicky, but metastatic melanoma does not respond to chemotherapy. He tried alternate therapies as well and fought as hard as he could. He tried radiotherapy, steroids, oxygen, but the melanoma took hold and he lost his battle less than four months after diagnosis.

Despite sun awareness being more prevalent now, insidious skin damage still occurs despite our best efforts. Australia has the highest rates of skin cancer in the world, with two-thirds of Australians developing some kind of skin cancer by the time they are 70. If not detected and treated early enough, skin cancers can become fatal; more than 2,000 Australians die every year. Despite regular warnings, almost 14 per cent of adults, 24 per cent of teenagers and 8 per cent of children (scary) get sunburnt on the weekends in Australia. It happens while you are gardening, at the beach and pool, or having a barbecue. You can also get sunburnt on cool and overcast days.

If detected early enough, skin cancer can be treated and rarely becomes fatal. While many thousands of people have accessed the Lions' skin cancer screening over the past five years in SA and NT, it was known that a mobile screening unit was critical to the detection of skin cancer in the high-risk regions of South Australia. With the Lions Club International Foundation, $200,000 has been raised and is now providing a mobile screening unit.

I, as a member of Aberfoyle and districts, together with the member for Reynell who is also a member, attended the launch a couple of weeks ago of their mobile screening unit. Thank you to the Lions Club. Well done and congratulations on the work you are going to do preventing skin cancers in our community.

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