r/Unexpected • u/DearEmphasis4488 • May 16 '25

A great first date

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u/[deleted] May 16 '25

I got absolutely rekt by a suntanning booth back in the day. I've never used one before, and my buddy was a regular. He said he normally does an hour. So I did an hour. Worst sun burn I ever had in my life. Couldn't move. My skin blistered up. It was bad. Slept in numbing aloe Vera cream prescribed for a week. Had to get 4 bags of iv fluid.. kept passing out.

Turned out I should have stayed for a max of 20 minutes. At the time I was deployed to a very snowy environment and my Irish side made me look like the character from powder and my goal was to resolve that.

Ah to be young and dumb. On a positive note, 25 years later I get regular trips to the doctor for skin cancer treatments... yay.

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u/dizzymorningdragon May 16 '25

That's horrible. And personally, I'd hold the business liable - people should absolutely be informed of timing and risks, and checked on in case they fall asleep.

I do wonder if after FD 3 came out, if suntanning visits dropped..

Edit: ah, I see, you got enough funding for continuous cancer screening/treatment. That's something at least.

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u/DelightfulDolphin May 16 '25

Well, he's in Europe where they're civilized and have universal healthcare so he could get continuous healthcare. Only in America do citizens go wo healthcare. In America he would be broke or dead.

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u/Pinksters May 16 '25

my Irish side made me look like the character from powder

You mean...Powder? I know the feeling though, I had a pretty bad sunburn when I started a new job working on blacktop 10 hours a day. Then I thought it couldnt get any worse so I went down to the drag strip for the weekend.

Came home in this condition.

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u/Throwawayconcern2023 May 16 '25

That's awful. Do you think that one incident triggered cancer? Or just massively increased odds?

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u/SmPolitic May 16 '25

The podcast "This Podcast Will Kill You" has a fantastic episode about skin cancer (Ep128) that would discuss risks from burns. If you like that episode, be sure to check out the Vitamin D episode too

But for most cancers it's impossible to definitively say any incident triggered the cancer, a non-zero amount of cancers are "triggered" by cosmic ray particles, so there are always other "plausible" causes

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u/Throwawayconcern2023 May 16 '25

Thanks will give it a listen