Countdown star Susie Dent opens up on cancer scare after TV make-up artist spotted worrying sign
COUNTDOWN’s Susie Dent has revealed she had a terrifying cancer scare after a TV make-up artist urged her to get a mark under her eye checked.
The TV wordsmith, 58, told how the doctor then diagnosed skin cancer when she finally got it checked out - a year after the mark first appeared.
She has opened up on her journey for the first time while chatting on the Virgin Radio breakfast show with Chris Evans, who has recently been given the all-clear from cancer himself.
Linguist and lexicographer Susie said: “I had one under my eye, a few years ago now. And it just felt like a little cut.
“So it was a kind of linear one and just wouldn’t heal. And I just kept putting lots of different cream on it.
“So, I had it for too long. I had it for about a year.
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“My GP said, ‘I’m going to say the word carcinoma, but don’t panic’.
And then they took it off, they kind of excised it. So, I’ve got a bit of a kind of scar under my eye.
“This one doesn’t spread, so we were really lucky.
“I genuinely just thought, ‘I have cut my eye’, and I didn’t think about it from one week to the next.
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"And it was my makeup artist that said, ‘I think you should get that checked out.’”
Carcinoma is cancer that forms in epithelial tissue, which lines most of your organs, the internal passageways in your body and your skin.
Most cancers affecting your skin, breasts, kidney, liver, lungs, pancreas, prostate gland, head and neck are carcinomas.
Susie added: “Just beware, because they don’t always look like moles or things that you would expect, and they can just look like little cuts.”
It comes after Chris, 57, last week revealed he’d received the good news surgeons had been able to remove the cancerous mole from his leg, with no residual tissue remaining.