“I never thought a simple manicure could kill me.” It is with these words that Grace Garcia begins her story. Originally from San Gabriel, California, this 50-year-old mother contracted skin cancer after an overly aggressive manicure. It all starts in November 2021. Ahead of the Thanksgiving celebrations, Grace Garcia makes an appointment at a so-called “sophisticated” nail bar near her home. Unfortunately, the manicure does not go as planned. “The beautician was very aggressive with my cuticle and at the end, I noticed that it was raw, says the Californian in the columns of Fox News. It hurt me.”
Back home, Grace takes care to apply antibiotic cream to her fingernail. But after a few days, she finds that the wound is not healing. Worse, a small bump begins to form at her cuticle. On the advice of her family doctor, Grace makes an appointment with a dermatologist in April 2022. There is a cold shower. The latter diagnoses him with squamous cell carcinoma, a skin cancer probably due to a papillomavirus (HPV) infection linked to his wound contracted during his manicure. “In most cases, cancer-causing strains of HPV are sexually transmitted,” Dr Shari Lipner, a dermatologist at Cornell University in New York, told Today. gave an opening.”
Improperly sterilized tool involved?
According to the doctor, it is possible that the virus was transmitted to Grace during her manicure. “It is possible that a tool that came into contact with a genital wart was not sterilized,” he explains, although there is no evidence to date. Either way, Grace had to undergo Mohs surgery, which allowed doctors to remove all of her cancer. Luckily, it didn’t spread to other parts of the body. The mother-of-three has therefore been able to return to a normal life, although she now has to visit her dermatologist regularly for check-ups.
Grace’s finger was infected. © Pexels
