Like many Australians, Wayne Grimley grew up spending a lot of time in the sun. His family had lax views about sunburn and sun safety.
"[I was] in the water from dawn to dusk," he said of his childhood on the Gold Coast.
"The grandparents said, 'Summer's coming on, you get a nice little burn to start the season.'"
Decades later, Mr Grimley still spends time outdoors, but his attitude towards sun safety has changed after finding a basal cell carcinoma (BCC) skin cancer near his eye.
"I had a little BCC that started close to my tear duct," he said.
It took ophthalmologist and oculoplastic surgeon Sharon Morris five-and-a-half hours to remove the skin cancer from Mr Grimley's face.
"We were touch and go... at one stage we were very close to losing the eye," Dr Morris said.
What lay on the surface of Mr Grimley's face was not representative of the depth of the cancer, she said.
"What was laying deeper was inside the nasal cavity and inside the orbit sitting against one of the muscles of the eyes," she said.
"Then it was involving at least a half of the upper and lower eyelid,
"So we've lost all of that tissue to clear the window [to] try to save the eye [and] keep the eye moving."
Mr Grimley's upper and lower eyelids needed to be reconstructed by using skin from his forehead.
He is now "tumour free" and "able to function", Dr Morris says, "I'm so thrilled for him".
Treating eyelid skin cancers
Of all skin cancers, 5–10 per cent are found in the eyelid region, Dr Morris says.
"Almost 50 per cent of our theatre lists are now taken up with eyelid cancer cases," she said.
Treating skin cancers near the eyes can be more complex than treating cancers on other parts of the skin, Dr Morris says.
"It's the fact the eyelid is a very important structure for protecting against the eye. It's the first form of defence for the eye itself," she said.
"It's a bit like a joint: It needs to function and move and therefore each part of the eyelid needs to be reconstructed when there's a larger cancer involved."
Dr Morris and the ophthalmology team at Gold Coast University Hospital (GCUH) are pushing for more people to be sun safe.
"There's a huge burden on the population and on the health resources," she said.
"While we can help people at that stage, we want people to protect themselves more so that we can prevent it from being an issue,"
Preventing skin damage
Elliott Moussa is an ophthalmology registrar at GCUH and a volunteer surf lifesaver at a Gold Coast beach where he sees the potential sun damage being caused.
"We know that varying degrees of sun exposure can predispose people to developing skin cancers, particularly on the eyelid, which may or may not be covered with sunscreen," Dr Moussa said.
"Hats are great and sunglasses are great but when we're in the water, we don't wear them so sun exposure does increase."
Surgery to remove skin cancers has become routine at the hospital, he says: "We're cutting them out day in, day out".
Dr Moussa says people need to remember that skin cancer can affect people of any age and doesn't solely develop in older people.
"We spend a lot of our time on weekends, mornings and afternoons outside of work at the beach It's where we want to be," he said.
"But we just need to be sun smart — sun safe."
The doctors are asking people to remember to slip, slop, slap, seek and slide and are urging parents to help set up good behaviours in their children.
"What you do as a child really reflects on what you do now — so schools making sure they look after children when they go to swim carnivals and not letting them burn [and] parents taking a lot of precautions around children and their friends' children," Dr Morris said.
World's skin cancer capital
Joanne Aitken from Cancer Council Queensland says skin cancer is the most common cancer to be diagnosed in Australia.
Sunscreen use across Australia"Queensland has way and above the highest rate of melanoma and skin cancer in total in the world," she said.
"Australia has very high rates, but the other states don't have rates as high as Queensland and we do lead the world in skin cancer rate tables.
"We estimate that about 2 in 3 people in Australia will be diagnosed with some form of skin cancer during their life."
Professor Aitken says there is no exact record for the number of non-melanoma skin cancers, which aren't as serious as melanomas.
"Non-melanoma skin cancers are far more common," she said.
"They don't tend to cause as much death as melanoma, but because of the sheer number of them that are diagnosed, they are actually the biggest cost.
"So it's a really big cost to the health system. Not only to the health system but to the population of Australia."
