Paul Salmon says the Skin Centre Trust's A Night in Venice Charity Fundraiser Ball will be the "social event of the year" for the Bay.
Paul Salmon says the Skin Centre Trust's A Night in Venice Charity Fundraiser Ball will be the "social event of the year" for the Bay.
It's 9pm and dermatologist Paul Salmon has just driven to Auckland after a full day of surgery in Tauranga.
A specialist in removing facial skin cancers, he's now trying to get an excited teenager to sleep at the family home in Parnell.
In the morning, Salmon and daughter Penelope fly to Sicily, where she is competing with schoolmates in the world orienteering championships.
"We've been selling samosas and doing sausage sizzles outside Mitre 10," Salmon says with a good-natured sigh over the phone.
It feels a bit mean to interview the founder of Tauranga's Skin Centre at such a late hour, but a plan to speak in person earlier in the day was thwarted by his intense surgical list.
Bay of Plenty Times Weekend met Salmon ahead of the Skin Centre Trust's A Night in Venice Charity Fundraiser Ball, which is to be held on May 13 and aims to raise more than $100,000 for the Tauranga community.
Five hundred tickets have already been sold to the ball, which Salmon says will benefit "the best causes" and, with its black-tie masquerade theme promises to be "the social event of the year".
"People should grab a table for themselves and their friends," he says. "[It offers] great reasons to get dressed up in your glad rags and have a fantastic night out."
Funds raised will go to two local charities: Waipuna Hospice, which Salmon says does "the most fantastic job that no one else would provide if they weren't doing it", and Te Tuinga Whanau Support Services Trust for its work with the homeless.
Salmon says homelessness was not on the agenda when he moved to Tauranga 20 years ago and he praises Te Tuinga Whanau for providing support and shelter to "those people who are disadvantaged and often at the wrong end of what life can deliver".
There is also a third cause, P education, about which the 53-year-old feels "very, very strongly".
"I know through my contacts in the police force that P is an absolute scourge right through every level of our society ... It's how the gangs make all their money these days and in the meantime it wrecks people's lives."
Salmon believes there is a lack of formal response from the Government in terms of education about the drug in schools - and that is the area into which he wants to channel funds.
"Kids need to know that P is not a fun thing that has no consequences. I'd like us to be able to better prepare our kids for the time when they're round at the party and someone hands them a joint.
"I'd like them to know they need to have some thoughts going through their heads when they look at that joint, that it might actually be laced with P and it might be the start of a very, very bad time for them."
The charity ball is the second such event for the Skin Centre Trust, and for the last 15 years, Salmon and his family have also donated hundreds of pohutukawa trees to projects with the Tauranga City Council.
"Tauranga's been good to our family and we're trying to give something back, particularly by creating shade on streets and in parks for people, and in the last few years, revegetation on Mauao."
Asked the origins of his desire to help the community, Salmon - the son of a High Court judge - credits it to messages he had growing up.
"And my wife is pointing to herself," he adds with a laugh.
Salmon has been married to Rachael Donovan, a registered nurse, for 22 years.
The couple met at Tauranga Hospital and have four children, Max, 17, Gabrielle, 16, Penelope, 13, and Natalie, 11.
Paul Salmon, Skincentre Tauranga
Until three years ago, the family lived at Mt Maunganui, but now spend the school year in Auckland for Gabrielle's education.
Gabrielle has Down syndrome and goes to Baradene College, which Salmon says is the best school for her, being very inclusive, holistic and promoting an ethos of community service.
"They really value getting the kids to think about others other than themselves, which I think in this day and age of the selfie [and] the selfie generation is a great thing."
So does having a child with Down syndrome create extra challenges for his family?
"Having Gabrielle as a member of our family, that's just a blessing," he says without hesitation. "She's a lovely child and comes with no more good or bad faults than all other children."
Despite being a surfer and volunteer lifeguard, Salmon says the decision to uproot the family from the Mount has been vindicated by the fact Gabrielle loves her school.
"The downside of that though is that we've had to shift to Auckland which just comes with everything that Aucklanders gripe about, including the traffic."
His other daughters also attend Baradene while Max is in his last year at ACG.
The plan is to return to the Bay permanently once the kids finish school, but in the meantime, Salmon commutes weekly to Tauranga while also practising in Auckland.
This year marks 20 years since he opened the Skin Centre, bringing his expertise as a Mohs surgeon to the Bay.
Mohs is a method used to treat facial skin cancers that Salmon learned in the United States and which although widely used there, remains niche in New Zealand.
"Its advantages are that it enables you to remove a skin cancer with extremely narrow margins but be absolutely sure that you've removed it all."
Skin cancers make up the majority of the Skin Centre's work and there is no shortage of patients.
The Bay has twice the national average rate of melanoma and Salmon says the latest data shows it is increasing.
This contrasts to Australia's Queensland, which has seen a slight decline.
Australia began its sun safe campaign a decade earlier than New Zealand but Salmon says the main problem is our climate.
"It's too cold and because it's cold people expose themselves to the incredibly intense UV that we have ... Most of the year, it's much more pleasant to be in the sun than to be in the shade."
Salmon has seen farmers sunburnt in winter after fencing shirtless, and says the message to cover up is a hard sell, including to his own children.
But he says melanoma can strike at any age and a family history, burning episodes (in childhood or adulthood), blue or green eyes, blond or red hair, freckling and certain patterns of moles are among risk factors.
"People who have more than 100 moles have about six times the risk of melanoma than the rest of the population."
When I tell him I'm screwed, he laughs and says the key is self-surveillance of the skin.
"If you're keeping a close eye on yourself every three or four months, then it's pretty unlikely you'll develop something that can't be sorted out ... It's the most important thing in terms of picking up early melanoma."
New melanoma drugs were key in fighting the disease in the advanced stages and he supported the Government's decision to fund Keytruda and Opdivo.
Often the most aggressive tumours were seen in younger people and the move made economic as well as compassionate sense.
"The amount of taxation revenue lost from all those years that someone might've worked instead of passing away and not being available as part of tax revenue probably pays for the drug."
Cosmetic procedures were a growing part of New Zealand dermatology practice, but "thankfully not as much as in the US".
"It has a place and it's nice to be able to help someone with their self-esteem who has some problem they can't otherwise fix, but skin cancer is why I get up and go to work in the morning. It's to try and cure people of skin cancer."
It hasn't always been this way for Salmon, who felt lost after graduating from Auckland medical school in 1987.
He took two years out to race ocean yachts, competing in the Fastnet and Volvo races, before stumbling across an old classmate who raved about the combination of procedural work and academic challenge in dermatology.
"The penny dropped for me that that's exactly what I was looking for in a job and I haven't looked back."
Salmon did his specialist training at the University of San Francisco, where he learned Mohs, and opened the Skin Centre in 1997 after more post-graduate training in Tauranga.
The practice has grown to employ five dermatologists and two primary care doctors, and Skin Centre staff also service Tauranga and Rotorua hospitals.
Salmon says although greatly increased from the past, the number of public clinics is still inadequate in the Bay, and if more funding was available, "we could easily provide three or four times that service".
A highlight of his career came in 2009 when he was chosen to organise and chair the dermatology surgery symposium for the World Congress of Dermatology in Prague, a first for a New Zealand dermatologist.
He is also very proud of the more than 50 papers he has published in the international medical literature, slotting the writing in "between 11 at night and 1 in the morning" and producing three or four papers a year with the support of Skin Centre colleague Neil Mortimer.
"That's cool for Tauranga, that we get recognised that way," Salmon says. "Tauranga is on the map in the world in terms of skin cancer."
*The Skin Centre Trust A Night in Venice Charity Fundraiser Ball, Saturday, May 13, 7pm to midnight, at ASB Arena Baypark, Mt Maunganui. Tickets available at Eventfinda.co.nz.
