Ellen McCleary was 46 when she returned from her July 2023 vacation with a dry nose and started bleeding. She put it down to hay fever, a severe allergy she had dealt with for as long as she could remember. But the nosebleeds began happening as often as three times a day.
Her family doctor prescribed antibiotics, but they made no difference. In August, this resident of Carlisle, in the United Kingdom, started coughing up blood clots. A biopsy and a CT scan revealed the real problem: a cancerous tumor behind the bone in her nose that was spreading toward her brain.
Ellen thought the operation would involve opening her up, removing the tumor and closing her back up. But, she said, the tumor grew in the two weeks beforehand, and the surgeons had to remove her entire nose. She woke up from six hours of surgery without it. Six weeks of radiotherapy followed, and today she is told she is cancer-free, though she is being monitored closely.
She now wears a prosthesis (she is on her seventh, because it shrinks as she heals) and plans to use a magnetic nose. Her advice is simple: if your nose bleeds, even a little, see a doctor, and if they fob you off, insist.
