Loose Women star Coleen Nolan has opened up about receiving a skin cancer diagnosis.
The daytime TV panellist told viewers of Monday’s show that she underwent treatment for basal cell carcinoma on her shoulder, before being told she has a melanoma on her face.
Coleen – whose sister Bernie died from breast cancer in 2013, before her other sisters Anne and Linda were later diagnosed with the cancer – explained how she had put off getting a red patch of skin on her shoulder checked for a year, explaining that it “wasn’t bothering” her.
It was only when she visited a doctor for a different issue around six months ago that she was told it was a basal cell carcinoma, which the NHS describes as a non-melanoma skin cancer that does not usually spread to other parts of the body.
Coleen has since used topical chemotherapy cream to successfully treat it, which she confirmed means she will not need to have it removed.
“My first instinct, typical me, was to laugh hysterically because I just thought that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard anybody say,” she said of being told the news.
“I’m sick of cancer and I also my first instinct was, I’m not telling anybody in my family because this, that I’ve got at the moment, seems nothing compared to what my sisters have been though.
“And now, what Linda is going through, where it has gone to her brain and she’s having chemo.
“It just seemed so pathetic for some reason to go back and go: ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got a carcinoma’.”
However, Coleen recently had a mark underneath her eye checked out, which doctors confirmed was melanoma skin cancer, which can spread to other areas of the body.
She will now use chemo cream again to treat the area, before a decision is made whether to remove it.
While Coleen said she had “not been ill” with either of her skin cancers, she explained she was speaking about it on Loose Women to raise awareness, having previously done this when participating in The Real Full Monty series.
“The one thing we keep putting out is awareness. It’s all about getting checked out, even if it could be nothing,” she said.
“I thought I need to take a leaf out of my own book.”
Coleen’s sister Linda is was told she had incurable secondary breast cancer in her hip in 2017, four years after Bernie’s death from the disease aged 52.
The cancer later spread to Linda’s liver in 2020, before she was told earlier this year that the cancer had spread to her brain.
The siblings’ sister Anne successfully underwent treatment for stage three breast cancer following her diagnosis in 2020, having previously undergone treatment for the disease 20 years prior.
Coleen shortly after Anne and Linda’s 2020 diagnosis, Coleen said she was considering an elective double mastectomy operation to minimise her own chances of developing the disease.
Loose Women airs weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV1.