Nasal Hair

Jill has a very stressful mid-management job and at 53 she continually worries about being replaced. Not so much because of her age or because she doesn’t work hard enough, but because her new boss is a lot shorter than she is and seems uncomfortable around her.

"I thought it was the eye-chest thingy that made him uncomfortable and then I read a magazine article about Cary Grant and freaked out," laughs Jill.

"Apparently, he was turned off doing up close and personal scenes in movies with Sophia Loren because she had nasal hair. Huh? Is there such a thing?"

Quickly Jill located a mirror and tipped her nose back in the general direction of her eyes in order to discover whether she, too, had nasal hair.

"Oh my God, I did. Where did these hairs come from? Is it a menopausaul thing?"

She blushed at the thought of having offended people like Cary Grant -- and probably her new boss, too -- who, by virtue of being shorter than her, or up close and personal with her, were forced to look up her nose.

Being taller than average Jill had grown accustomed to looking down her nose at people, but it never occurred to her that they might be looking up hers.

She wondered whether she should perform nasal cavity inspections before she goes to work every day just to make sure there's nothing there that might offend her boss.

"Locating a pair of tweezers at short notice was very difficult," says Jill. "You see, I had given up plucking my eyebrows years ago after Brooke Shields made bushy eyebrows popular."

"Remembering the pain of the weekly eyebrow plucking sessions I winced at the thought of having to inflict the tweezers on a part of my anatomy that I never see - and therefore do not care much about," says Jill. "But, for the sake of all those short people out there - especially my boss - I was determined to have a hairless nose."

People pull some incredibly grotesque faces when plucking their eyebrows, but they were nothing compared with the pug nosed spectacle that stared back at her from the mirror as Jill proceeded to attack the foliage inside her nose.

"I had to contort my nose into amazing shapes in order to find stray hairs," laughs Jill, "and the pain I suffered when each hair was removed was exquisite. Eyebrow plucking was a cinch compared to this!"

Finally, Jill completed the task and was left with two nasal cavities that had a healthy pink glow about them. She was satisfied that everyone who looked up her nose would be pleased by what they saw. Nary a hair in sight.

And then it occurred to her that perhaps Nature put those hairs in our noses for a purpose.

"What purpose, I don't know," says Jill, "but perhaps they prevent stray insects from making a home in our noses, or maybe they were intended to filter large particles from the air we breathe."

"Anyway, I rationalized that nasal hair, like armpit hair - and, dare I mention, any other bodily hair apart from our crowning glories - is rather ugly and serves no real purpose now that we have evolved to live in air-conditioned, insect free, hot and cold running water houses rather than caves."

Jill was eager to try out her new hair-free nose on a few short people, but as luck would have it, she did not run into any short people that weekend. However, she tipped her head back a few times when she was among people of equal height, hoping they would catch a glimpse of her hairless pink nasal cavities and say something complimentary, but nobody did.

"I thought that nasal hair may be something only short people notice in people taller than themselves," says Jill, "so I had to wait until I went to work the next day to gain a reaction from my boss - the person for whom I had gone through all this agony!"

Jill spent all that night wondering how fast nasal hairs grow. Are they like a man's beard? Would she wake up in the morning with stubble in her nasal cavities? Would nose plucking become a daily, rather than a weekly plucking session as it was with eyebrows? Would the hairs grow back longer or thicker?

Naturally, after these dire thoughts before going to bed Jill had a terrible nightmare about being exhibited in a freak circus as the incredible nasal bearded woman and when dawn broke she rushed into the bathroom to see what had grown overnight. Nothing had. What a relief.

At work that day, Jill deliberately spent a lot of time standing in front of her boss, looking down her nose at him, thus forcing him to look up hers.

She dearly wanted to ask him: "Do you notice anything different about me?" but did not have the courage to do so. He did not treat her any differently so she was at a loss to know whether he ever noticed the nasal hair in the first place.

"Maybe he was too focused on that part of my anatomy that meets his eyes to care about looking up a bit," laughs Jill, "so after a few weeks I stopped plucking my nasal hairs."

She came to the conclusion that nobody but Cary Grant would notice such a silly thing, but every now and again she wonders.

skin cancer nose drama

Your nose is the first thing people notice about you, and if you have a little zit on it everyone stares at it, if not comments on it, like Solace’s boyfriend did – what’s that on your nose? he asked with thinly veiled disgust at a small warty blemish on her pert little nose – and while his comments actually led to a diagnosis of something quite serious she could never forgive his attitude.

"The little wart had started off as flaking skin; there was no bleeding or discoloration,and it had probably been there for a few months before it became so noticeable that the guy I was dating commented on it," says Solace, 25, “and at that point I decided to do something about it."

“When you think of skin cancer you automatically think of old people who've spent their entire lives in the sun without protection," explains Solace, “so when I went to a dermatologist to remove what I thought was a little wart on my nose I was devastated to learn it was an aggressive basal cell carcinoma (BCC) that needed major surgery.”

"Had the BCC been anywhere other than my nose it wouldn't have been a drama," sighs Solace. "It was bad enough thinking I had a wart on my nose, but being shown a picture of the surgery I needed and what I would look like afterwards -- and being told of the worst case scenario, that the cancer could be so deep I could lose my nose -- made me so ill I went home and threw up."

"I'm a brunette and my skin is more Mediterranean than milky white so I don't even fit the typical profile of a skin cancer victim," says Solace, "and in challenging my dermatologist's insistence that even minimum exposure to the sun, even from a window, can cause skin cancer I failed to convince him that something other than the sun -- such as a virus or heavy exposure to a computer screen or even one of the cosmetics I use -- was responsible for my nose BCC."

"There is absolutely no skin cancer, or any cancer, in my family history," says Solace. "I have two older sisters and a younger brother and they have no skin troubles either --dammit, I don't even know anybody with skin cancer -- so there has to be something about me or my lifestyle that is to blame – and it is most definitely not sun exposure!"

"My mom was very particular about letting us play in the sun, not so much because of skin cancer but because of preserving our complexions," says Solace, "so I can claim, categorically, that I have never sunbathed in my life and had no reason whatsoever to fear skin cancer or any other disease, for that matter, because my mom was also totally against alcohol, tobacco and junk food."

"To be told I had skin cancer, then, was like being given a death sentence for a crime I hadn't committed and I was so sure that the dermatologist or the lab report was wrong that I obtained a second opinion," sighs Solace. "It was only with the affirmative second opinion that I was forced to face my cruel fate."

"My family were very supportive, but everyone else I talked to up to and after my operation was either dismissive or nasty, totally unable to put themselves in my shoes and imagine how they'd feel if it were their nose going under the knife," sighs Solace. "And my boyfriend made me feel like a leper or something; he was totally turned off by my diagnosis and acted like skin cancer was catching."

“After the operation, when I presented people with a Frankenstein's monster of a nose -- swollen, red, raw and stitched up with twenty or more stitches zigzagging the entire length of what was previously a very nice pert little nose they totally freaked out."

"It's amazing how many people I spoke to from then on actually knew someone who had had basal cell carcinomas removed from their backs, or their shoulders, or their arms --and said it was no big deal, it's not as if it's deadly melanoma, right? -- but they failed to realize that a BCC on a nose is very different in terms of psychological factors as well as the fact that there is very little skin on the nose and a deep cancer can actually lead to removal of the entire nose if not half of the face."

"These very same people -- including my boyfriend -- stared at me with disgust and horror after the operation," sighs Solace, "which just goes to show how important your nose is, and how normal it is to have psychological dramas about anything being wrong with it."

"Needless to say, my boyfriend stopped calling," sighs Solace. “Maybe it was silly of me to expect someone I’ve only known for a short time to support me through all this, but I was having sex with the guy and thought we had something good going.”

"I muddled through the first week as best I could, with mom's help and a lot of painkillers, and braved going back to work after the stitches were removed," says Solace, "but if I had to do it again, and there's a high chance of that with BCCs tending to recur in the same site within 5 years, I wouldn’t tell anybody outside my family, I’d take at least a month off work, I’d never set foot outside of the house while my nose was healing and if I had a boyfriend I’d dump him before he dumped me.”

"You see, it wasn't so much the operation that hurt me," confides Solace, "it was the attitude of the people around me, especially the guy I was dating."

"My dermatologist and the plastic surgeon who did the flap reconstruction were great, true professionals, who understood the gravity of the situation I was facing," says Solace, "but the nurses, unfortunately, were nasty to me, probably because they see this sort of thing every day and think it's normal, nothing worth complaining about -- until it happens to them, of course."

"They sent me home with a bleeding wound and told me to keep on pinching my nose to stop the bleeding," sighs Solace. "Huh? How was I supposed to do that with a massive dressing on my nose? And then, despite my protesting I knew nothing about dressings, they gave me no instructions about how to change the bandages, or how often, and looked at me with scorn for being squeamish and unknowledgeable about such things."

"So much for day surgery,” sighs Solace. “You’re in and out like you’re on a conveyor belt, there’s very little humanity and I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have my mom to look after me afterwards."

"Three months down the track, after massaging the nose twice daily with a special cream, the scars are still raised and a bit red, and my nose is totally numb," says Solace. "While makeup hides the defects somewhat, and nobody stares at me any more, I am still very self-conscious about being damaged and the thought of dating or going out scares me."

"There's no way, though, that I will ever seek a revision operation to make me look better," says Solace. "I have already had enough medical drama to last me for the rest of my life, and if skin cancer occurs spontaneously, as it appears to have done in my case, it would take another dire prognosis to get me under the knife again."

"Deep down I know that there is something very wrong with the current medical beliefs about the cause of skin cancer," says Solace. "Skin cancer is something old people get, not young people like me. There has to something other than sun exposure that is causing it in young people – computer screens, a virus, cosmetics?"

"Maybe my boyfriend was right about BCCs being potentially catching,” smiles Solace, “it may be sexually transmissible.”

“Maybe I caught it from him!"