Rhianna Benson
In April 2023, Lucy Thompson was picking at her acrylic nails one day, when she noticed an unnerving irregularity.
The British mum had already booked in for a fresh manicure, with her old, orange ombre set having grown out over several weeks.
Opting not to fork out the hefty cost of removal upon her arrival at the salon, Thompson, 35, decided to chip away at them herself.
After gently lifting the acrylic from her left thumb, her eye was quickly caught by something 'funny'.
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"I'd had my nails done and I ended up picking them off," the Hull, East Yorkshire-based woman later told press.
Going on, she explained she'd discovered a black line lurking underneath her thumbnail, which reached from her cuticles to the very tip.
Little did Thompson realise at the time, that the odd pattern upon her thumb was a very real sign of something sinister going on behind the scenes - something that would land her in hospital.
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"I thought I'd damaged it by taking off my nails or I might've banged it or trapped it in a door," the teacher confessed. "A straight, thin line just appeared and I remember thinking 'that looks a bit odd'.
"I'd had them on for about two weeks just to see friends. I was aware of it and thought 'I'll just keep an eye on it' but wasn't worried."
It was only after receiving encouragement from a friend that Thompson opted to check in with her local GP about her peculiar-looking blemish.
Minutes after entering the doctor's office, she was dealt the blindsiding blow - the black line could indicate cancer, and a sample needed to be sent of for screening immediately.
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"Before she even sat down, she said that it could be cancer and 'We'll need to send it off,'" Thompson recalled.
"I thought I was just going to get told it's nothing. I got referred to a specialist cancer hospital straight away and they said they wanted to remove it as soon as possible."
To her frustration, her first round of tests proved inconclusive, and Thompson was forced to undergo a further biopsy.
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"I really was scared," a heartbroken Thompson confessed. "I could see every day it was growing and growing.
"It was really tough. My first thought was 'who's going to look after my kids like I can?'. That's what I was scared of."
She went on to add: "I didn't want to leave my kids."
After bombarding the surgery with phone-calls in the days that followed, however, she finally received the gut-wrenching news she'd been dreading - the cells within her nail were indicated pre-cancer.
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"If left untreated," Thompson continued. "It would've turned into subungual melanoma."
According to Cleveland Clinic, this rare yet serious type of skin cancer develops underneath the nail, and presents itself in the form of black or dark brown streaks.
Subungual melanoma - which accounts for 0.7% to 3.5% of all melanomas worldwide - unlike other skin cancer variants, isn't understood to be caused by exposure to UV, however.
Thankfully, Thompson was able to undergo surgery to have the pre-cancerous cells in her nail removed before the disease spread to other areas of the body.
"When people see it, they just think it's a weird line and people leave it too long, which is why I think it doesn't have a high survival rate. Luckily, I haven't had anything since," the relieved mum added.
"I regularly have a check of all my nails now. I only rarely get my nails done now and if I do I only have them on for a week or so."
Now, she's urging beauty lovers not to cover their natural nails with stick-ons or gels.
"If you see a mark on your nail, any changes, just get yourself checked at the doctors," Thompson encouraged. "The chances are it'll be nothing, but if it is something, the sooner you get seen, the sooner you can get it treated.
"The more you put it off, the more dangerous it can be."
She went on to add: "I have a lot of friends that get their nails done all the time and just get infills and I've always said 'tell [the manicurist] to take the lot off' so they can check their nailbeds. I always make sure everybody is aware."