I Lost My Nose To Cancer | SHAKE MY BEAUTY

WHEN she was diagnosed with Stage 2 nasal cancer in 2014, Tina, 43, from Texas, was devastated. After some deliberation she made the difficult decision to undergo surgery to completely remove her nose. Tina told Truly: “I actually had one doctor tell me, ‘You’re a young attractive woman we don’t want to permanently disfigure you'. I said: ‘That’s all great and fine, and I can appreciate that but what good is pretty if I’m six feet under?’" After the surgery, Tina was worried about how her children would react but they responded with love and they now have a family saying ‘whatever okay looks like, it’s going to be okay’. Tina said: “The way my husband looked at me never changed, the way my children looked at me, never changed, not for one second.” Tina was fitted with a prosthetic nose but it irritated her skin and she did not like the way it looked. She felt like she wore it for everyone else so one day decided not to put it on and has not looked back. Tina said: “People told me, 'You would be so pretty if you had a nose'. I’m still pretty anyway, I just stopped letting it define me, and that was kind of liberating.” Tina has had to fight hard for her confidence and wants to challenge beauty standards. She said: “From the moment we're born, society tries to fit us in a box of what is acceptably beautiful, what is acceptably appeasing to the eyes, and I want to shatter that box. I want to destroy it. I don't want anybody to ever feel like they're not beautiful.”