Mountain Views News          Saturday, May 28, 2016

THE GOOD LIFE

9

Mountain Views-News Saturday, May 28, 2016 

SIMPLE STEPS TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM 
MELANOMA SKIN CANCER

SENIOR HAPPENINGS


HAPPY BIRTHDAY! …May Birthdays

Joann Serrato-Chi, Harriett Lyle, Jean Coleman, Birgitta Gerlinger, Donna 
Mathieson, Dorothy Murphy, Linda Wochnik, Marian Woodford, Debbie Sheridan, 
Joanne Anthony, Carole Axline, Kika Downey, Shirley Hall, Annie Scalzo, Janet Ten 
Eyck, Jane Thomas, Ray Burley. 

* To add your name to this distinguished list, please call the paper at 626.355.2737. YEAR of birth 
not required but you must be over 60.

...................................................................

ACTIVITIES: Unless listed differently, all activities are at the 
Hart Park House (Senior Center) 222 W. Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre

 

 

 YWCA San Gabriel Valley - Intervale Senior Cafe 

Seniors 60 years of age and up can participate in the YWCA Intervale daily lunch program held 
at the Hart Park House Senior Center. Meals are served Monday through Friday at 12:00 pm 
and participants are encouraged to arrive by 11:45 am. Meals are a suggested donation of $3.00 
for seniors 60 and over or $5.00 for non-senior guests. Daily reservations are necessary, space is 
limited. Please reserve your lunch by calling 626-355-0256.

Tech Talk: Held on Monday, January 25th from 1:30-2:30pm. Learn how to use your new 
technology devises. Please reserve your space with the Hart Park House by calling 626-355-7394. 

 

Hawaiian and Polynesian Dance Class: Every Tuesday morning from 10am to 11am. Join 
instructor Barbara Dempsey as she instructs you in the art of hula. 

 

Bingo: Every Tuesday beginning at 1:00pm. Cards are only $0.25 each! Everyone is welcome to 
join. May be canceled if less than 5 people. 

 

Free Blood Pressure Testing: 2nd Tuesday of the month from 11am to 12pm. No appt. is 
necessary. 

 

Brain Games: Thursday, January 21st, 10:30am - 11:30am, improve your memory and strengthen 
your brain. Activities facilitated by Hugo, Community Liaison for New Wave Home care of 
Pasadena. 

 

Free Legal Consultation: Wednesday, January 27th from 10:30am to Noon. Attorney Lem 
Makupson is available for legal consultation. He specializes in Family Law, Wills, Trusts, Estates, 
and Injury. Appointment are required by calling 626-355-7394. 

Balance Class: No Balance Class due to Martin Luther King Holiday. 

 

Chair Yoga: Mondays and Wednesdays from 11:00 to 11:45 am. A suggested donation of $5 at one 
of the classes is requested, but is not required. 

 

Case Management: Meets the 2nd Thursday of the month. Case Management services are 
provided by the YWCA and provide assistance in a variety of areas. Appointments are required 
and can be scheduled by calling the HPH Office at 626-355-7394. 

 

Birthday Celebrations: Every second Thursday of the month at the Hart Park House. The free 
birthday cake is provided by the Sierra Madre Civic Club. 

 

Game Day: Every Thursday starting at 12:00pm. (Please note the time change.) A regular group of 
seniors play poker. Other games available for use. 

 

Free Strength Training Class: Every Friday from 12:45pm to 1:30pm with Lisa Brandley. The 
class utilizes light weights for low impact resistance training. All materials for the class are 
provided. 

 

Senior Club: Every Saturday at the Hart Park House Senior Center. Brown bag lunch at 11:30am. 
Club meeting at noon. Bingo 12:30-3:30pm. Annual Membership is only $10.00. 

Dear Savvy Senior,

Does skin cancer run in families? My 63-year-
old brother died of melanoma last year, and I’m 
wondering about my risks of getting this. What can 
you tell me?

Younger Sibling

 

Dear Sibling,

While long-term sun exposure and sunburns are 
the biggest risk factors for melanoma – the deadliest 
form of skin cancer – having a sibling or parent 
with melanoma does indeed increase your risk of 
getting it two to three times. 

 Each year, about 75,000 Americans are diagnosed 
with melanoma, and around 10,000 people will die 
from it. While anyone can get it, those most often 
diagnosed are Caucasians, age 50 and older. And 
those with the highest risk are people with red or 
blond hair, blue or green eyes, fair skin, freckles, 
moles, a family history of skin cancer and those 
who had blistering sunburns in their youth. 

 

Skin Exams

The best way you can guard against melanoma 
and other skin cancers (basal and squamous cell 
carcinomas) is to protect yourself from the sun, and 
if you’re over age 50, get a full-body skin exam done 
by a dermatologist every year, especially if you’re 
high risk. 

 Self-examinations done every month or so is 
also a smart way to detect early problems. Using 
mirrors, check the front and backside of your entire 
body, including the tops and undersides of your 
arms and hands, between your toes and the soles of 
your feet, your neck, scalp and buttocks. Be on the 
lookout for new growths, moles that have changed, 
or sores that don’t heal. Follow the ABCDE rule 
when examining suspicious moles.

· Asymmetry: One half of a mole doesn’t match 
the other.

· Border: The border is blurred or ragged.

· Color: The mole has uneven colors, often shades 
of brown, tan or black, with patches of pink, red, 
white or blue.

· Diameter: The lesion is new or at least a quarter-
inch in diameter.

· Evolving: The mole is changing in size, shape or 
color.

 For more self-examination tips and actual 
pictures of what to look for, see SkinCancer.org or 
Melanoma.org. 

 In the spring and summer, there are a variety of 
places that offer free skin cancer screenings. Check 
with the American Academy of Dermatology (888-
462-3376, aad.org/public/spot-skin-cancer), which 
offers screenings done by hundreds of volunteer 
dermatologists across the U.S., and the American 
Society for Dermatologic Surgery (asds.net/
skincancerscreening.aspx).

 

Sun Protection

Even though you can’t change your skin or family 
history, there are some proven strategies that can 
help you protect yourself.

 For starters, avoid tanning beds, and when you go 
outside, slather on broad-spectrum SPF 30, water-
resistant sunscreen on both sunny and cloudy 
days. If you don’t like the rub-on lotions, try the 
continuous spray-on sunscreens which are easier to 
apply and re-apply and less messy. Also, seek the 
shade when rays are most intense – between 10 a.m. 
and 2 p.m.

 You can also protect your skin by wearing a wide-
brimmed hat, and long sleeves and pants when 
possible. The best clothing options are tightly-woven 
fabric that help prevent the sun’s rays from reaching 
your skin, or you can wash-in an invisible shield sun 
protection into your cloths with SunGuard laundry 
additive (see sunguardsunprotection.com). You 
can even buy a variety of lightweight clothing and 
hats that offer maximum UV protection in their 
fabric. Coolibar.com and SunPrecautions.com are 
two sites that offer these products.

 

Treatments

If melanoma is caught and treated early, it’s nearly 
100 percent curable. But if it’s not, the cancer can 
advance and spread to other parts of the body, 
where it becomes hard to treat and can be fatal. 
Standard treatment for melanoma is surgical 
removal. In advanced cases however, chemotherapy 
or radiation may also be used, along with a variety 
of new drug treatments.

 Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. 
Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.
org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today 
show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book.


KATIE Tse.....................This and That

THE ROOM OF DOOM

Well, I’m guilty yet again of recycling an old article. 
This one was originally about my de-junking of the 
“closet of doom” in my office at work. I’ve updated it to 
encompass not only the closet of doom, but my entire 
“room/office of doom!” And after reading it you’ll see 
why I didn’t get around to writing a new story for this 
week.

 Organization has never come naturally to me. I 
remember helplessly stuffing school papers into 
my desk or backpack during elementary school. 
My parents would question my “filing system” as I 
retrieved months-old crumpled papers. “Well, at least 
I didn’t lose them,” I reasoned. I grew up hearing the 
adage, “A place for everything 
and everything in its place.” 
The problem was that I 
kept changing the places for 
things, and then forgot where 
those places were.

 You’d hope that surviving 
higher education and nine 
years of work in public 
schools would instill greater 
organizational skills in 
me. Nope! I don’t think 
my problem is that I can’t 
categorize things, it’s that 
many things can fit into 
more than one category. 
This puts me at a loss as to 
how I should categorize 
them. Every so often I feel 
compelled to devote serious 
time to organizing my things. 
However, after half an hour of 
shuffling through papers, I’m 
no farther along than I was 
when I started. Eventually 
I give up and stuff everything back where I had it 
(hoping that I’d remember where that was). Often 
“where I had it” is either an overflowing file cabinet, a 
burgeoning supply closet, or cram-packed cupboards 
in my office at work.

 You’ve heard of “safe spaces,” well, these are more like 
disaster zones. In my own defense, I wasn’t totally at 
fault because they were already stuffed beyond capacity 
when I inherited my job. Public school classrooms 
aren’t the sort of places where people pack all their 
belongings into a tidy little box when they leave. No, 
more often than not they leave all their materials for 
the next person. Of course I was extremely grateful for 
the surplus of supplies when I started out. However, 
even then it was hard walking into another person’s 
organization system and trying to make sense of it. 
There were many things I never used, but felt unable to 
toss, since they were district property, and by extension, 
paid for by your tax dollars. And since I assumed that 
the lady before me found them useful, who was I to get 
rid of them? These were inevitably stuffed into disaster 
zones in the office of doom.

 One particularly harrowing place was my door-
less supply closet that remained dormant for years, 
like a brooding dragon waiting to devour any people 
or materials that passed by. Occasionally its contents 
piled up around the entrance, blocking access to the 
shelves. It was an avalanche waiting to happen, and I 
shuddered every time I placed anything in there. A few 
years ago, I asked my mom to sew me a curtain to hide 
the mess, which she did (thanks, Mom!). That didn’t 
fix the problem, but it hid it and made it look prettier.

 It would’ve kept on 
growing had not my then-
new boss asked me to store 
some things for a coworker 
a few years ago. This meant 
that I had to deal with the 
closet of doom. There for a 
while after this initial cleanse 
it stayed less scary than 
before, but the clutter soon 
bloated right back. Then a 
couple weeks ago I was told 
that I will be relocating to a 
new campus. Moving time!

My excitement is 
only tempered by the 
embarrassment that creeps 
up when I imagine someone 
moving into my office of 
doom, so I’ve been on a 
cleaning campaign to try to 
get a handle on the junk. It 
is an eye-opening experience! 
Like an archeological dig, I’m 
wiping decades of dust off 
books, cards, and other materials from the 70’s and even 
earlier. I’ve found caustic batteries, mimeographed 
copies of worksheets, and other relics from the past. 
You’d be surprised to see what happens to Play Dough 
after 40 years. Among my other discoveries was a giant 
dead cockroach in the bottom of a cardboard box. 
I’m just glad I discovered him before putting the box 
in the lounge for other unsuspecting teachers to pick 
through! 

 Although my room is not perfect even after days 
of de-junking, it’s better than when I started and it’s 
not worse than it was when I moved in nine years 
ago. I’m hoping my successor is not a neat freak and 
that she has a good sense of humor. At least I don’t 
think there are any other dead -or live- cockroaches 
waiting to scare her! Hoping to get you a brand new 
story for next week, unless, of course, I decide to 
de-junk my house. In that case you may never hear 
from me again! 


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com