Tanning Addict, 35, Was Left With A Hole In Her Nose After A 'Pink Pimple' On The End Turned Out To Be Skin Cancer That Needed To Be Cut Off

Laure Seguy, 35 (pictured left, before her illness), admits she sunbathed without using protection for decades, until 2018 when she noticed the small red mark that was 5mm big (see inset). Over the coming months, the spot intermittently bled then scabbed over again – a process that repeated itself several times. 

Her GP was concerned and Mrs Seguy was fast-tracked to see a dermatologist who diagnosed basal cell carcinoma, a slow-growing form of non-melanoma skin cancer. After having the tip of her nose sliced off by surgeons, Mrs Seguy, a yoga teacher from Toulouse, South France, had two operations to construct a new nose (Pictured centre, after a skin flap from her hairline to cover the hole). Mrs Seguy, who has a three-year-old daughter, Ayla-Rose, says she has now drastically overhauled her relationship with the sun after her ordeal. (Pictured right, after her most recent surgery).

In 2018, Mrs Seguy noticed the small red mark that was 5mm big, pictured

Mrs Seguy, who is married and has a daughter, Ayla-Rose, three, has now drastically overhauled her relationship with the sun.

She said: 'When I was younger, I never used to wear sun screen and I was in love with the look of having brown, tanned skin.

'But now I am so careful about protecting myself from the sun and I wear factor 50 and a hat, because you really don't realise how damaging the sun is, and I never want the same thing to happen ever again.'  


Mrs Seguy rarely thought to wear sun cream on holiday or during the sizzling summers where she lives in the South of France.

She said: 'I don't have freckles and I have quite tanned skin anyway, so I never really burn, only a little bit sometimes at the start of the summer.'

When she first noticed a 5mm spot on the tip of her nose last summer, Mrs Seguy, whose husband Tom, 33, is a sound engineer, thought little of it, assuming she had scratched it somehow.

In October 2018, she decided to tell her GP about it who initially thought it might be bacterial. They gave her a course of anti-bacterial creams. 

Mrs Seguy said: 'When they did nothing though, the doctor told me I should see a dermatologist, so I rang up to book an appointment.

'They told me that the next free slot was not until the following February and asked me what was the problem.

'I told them I had a spot on my nose that bled every now and then and had been there for five months.

'I remember hearing a blank on the other end of the line before the dermatologist said, "Okay, we have an appointment for you in 15 days".

'That's when I knew it was really serious.'

A biopsy of the pimple in November 2018 revealed she had basal cell carcinoma, which is more common but less dangerous than melanoma skin cancer. 

Mrs Seguy was told it was fine to wait until May 2019 to have the first of her three procedures as she was doing a yoga teaching training course. 

When May arrived, Mrs Seguy had 11mm off the end of her nose cut off, removing both cancerous and healthy cells, to make sure all the carcinoma had gone.

A week later, having analysed the cells, surgeons at the specialist cancer hospital, the Oncopole de Toulouse, were confident Mrs Seguy was cancer free.

Next, a week later came the second two-hour surgical procedure to cut a piece of skin from her hairline and pull it down, attaching it to the hole in her nose. The procedure is called a reconstructive skin flap.

Waking up groggy from the general anaesthetic, Mrs Seguy recalled her shock at seeing her new face, which she said looked 'utterly bizarre'.

Horribly self-conscious about her strange appearance, she was reluctant to leave the house over the next few weeks while the transferred skin knitted into her nose.

Then came her final operation on June 3 to remove the flap which had been feeding the skin graft, by keeping it connected to her bloodstream through a vein running from her forehead to her nose. 

Mrs Seguy said she will never forget the first time she left the house a week after the second operation.

She said: 'I felt really uncomfortable, as for the first time in my life I experienced what it was like for people to stare at you in the street.

'Strangers were coming up to me asking if I had been in a terrible accident, because my face was so mangled. I looked like a boxer who had been beaten up in the ring.

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Mrs Seguy finally saw her GP about her bleeding spot in October 2018. They gave her anti-bacterial creams which didn't work. Pictured before cancer