A doctor diagnosed a minister with skin cancer after catching sight of her at an event to celebrate St Patrick’s Day in Brussels this year. 

Minister of State for Health Mary Butler had noticed there was a spot or mole on the bridge of her nose sometime beforehand. However, during a consultation with her GP, she was told it was benign.

“It used to heal and it used to come back and it used to kind of come back and then it would heal again,” Minister Butler told Moncrieff. 

“I tried every kind of a cream that you could rub into it.” 

However, when the wires on the facemasks she used during lockdown kept inflaming it, Ms Butler asked to be referred to a dermatologist. 

NO REPRO FEE 24/09/2020 HSE media briefing. Pictured today are Mary Butler, Minster for State for Mental Health and Older People, and Paul Reid, CEO, HSE, in the RCPI, Dublin, at the media briefing for the weekly HSE operational update on the response to Covid-19. Photograph: Leon Farrell / Photocall Ireland

She was given an appointment for May and in the meantime was sent to represent the Government at St Patrick’s Day events in Brussels. 

“I went for a walk with the Irish Ambassador and we went for a walk down to the Grand-Place,” she recalled. 

“And there were lots of Irish people milling around and I met a lovely girl who had twins boys and she was from Ireland and feeling really lonely on that day.” 

But it was a chance encounter with another woman that stopped her dead in her tracks. 

“She said to me, ‘I hope you don’t mind what I’m going to say to you but my sister is a doctor in the USA and she’s with me here and she has seen your nose and you have a BCC - a basal cell carcinoma. 

"It’s a form of skin cancer and you should get it checked out.’” 

In May, Ms Butler went to her long awaited appointment with the dermatologist and was given some good news. 

“He told me it had to be removed but that it was more of a nuisance than anything else,” she said.  

He referred her to a plastic reconstructive surgeon and they operated on her in June under local anaesthetic. 

“It was like being at the dentist because I was frozen from my nose down to my mouth.” 

Further analysis confirmed that it was quite as benign as hoped for and the doctor described it as a “rodent ulcer - so it borrows right down.” 

A further operation was scheduled for 29th September - which was coincidently her birthday. 

“The last thing I remember before I went to sleep was about nine of them all around the bed and the anaesthetist, the consultant and the nurses, everyone, all singing Happy Birthday to me!”

Minister Butler returned to the Dáil yesterday and says she hopes her story will serve as a reminder about the dangers of skin cancer. 

“It is a warning to people,” she said. 

“I tan fairly well and I never thought I would be one of the people that would have skin cancer.”

Main image: Minister Mary Butler. Picture by: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie