A grandad was forced to go to a private doctor to have a large growth removed from his nose after he got fed up of waiting for the NHS to schedule the procedure. It all started five years ago, when Thomas Stevenson started noticing the growth appear on his nose, called rhinophyma.
Over time it started getting bigger and initially, his NHS doctor put him on antibiotics. But it didn't work so in 2020 he asked his doctor if he could have it removed.
After a two-year wait, he was finally referred to an outpatient clinic in April 2022 but no treatment was offered. The 69-year-old especially wanted it done before his granddaughter's 18th birthday party, because he felt like she would want him in the pictures with the visible growth.
The retired forklift driver was put on a waiting list but was told in August 2022 that NHS Lothian could not help him at that time. Thomas said: “My granddaughter was approaching her 18th birthday and I just knew she wouldn’t want me in the photographs."
Rhinophyma is a swelling of the nose. If the condition progresses, the nose becomes redder, swollen at the end and gains a bumpy surface which changes its shape.
He went to another NHS clinic in February 2023 and was told that no procedures for rhinophyma were being offered. It meant he was still on the waiting list and had no idea when, or even if, treatment would take place.
Speaking to the Daily Record, he added: “In relative terms I was lucky. My nostrils started closing up but I didn’t have any real difficulty breathing. With disfigurement, people stare. Kids were the worst – they just can’t help being honest.”
Thomas instead turned to Glasgow’s Ever Clinic for a two-hour laser excision carried out by aesthetic medicine specialist Dr Cormac Convery under local anaesthetic a few months ago. He said that people he meets think the difference in his appearance is “amazing”.
He added: “Now, I can get on with my life.” But he stated: “If Dr Convery can do this operation in a couple of hours, I don’t understand why the NHS can’t, or won’t, do it.
“It doesn’t seem fair. They see people who have had botched aesthetic treatments in places like Turkey and seem willing to fix these mistakes.
“I’m just happy I had it done. But if the NHS won’t help, perhaps they should consider referring people like me to professionals who can.”
