WASHINGTON - First lady Laura Bush says she first thought a sore on her right 
shin that turned out to be skin cancer was an insect bite. 
 
 
   President Bush, right, accompanied by first lady Laura Bush, 
 gestures as he addresses the media about his visit with troops wounded in 
 Iraq and Afghanistan, Friday, Dec. 22, 2006 at Walter Reed Army Medical 
 Center in Washington. [AP]
   | 
"Actually it never occurred to me 
to make it public," she told Bob Shieffer on CBS "Face the Nation" aired Sunday. 
"It was very minor. I thought it was an insect bite, actually, when I first got 
it, and then it just didn't get well." 
The first lady said she had a biopsy done before the November election. The 
squamous cell carcinoma is a malignant tumor and the second most common form of 
skin cancer. 
Mrs. Bush said she had it removed right after the election, adding: "I was 
never sick. I never felt badly." 
She said she is glad the information about the tumor got out, and hopes it 
will prompt people to pay closer attention to possible signs of cancer. She 
blamed the cancer on the hot west Texas sun and her fair complexion. 
"I never did a lot of sun bathing like some my friends did, because I didn't 
tan, really," she said. "But of course I played outside for my whole childhood 
(and) spent afternoons at the swimming pool and did those things that we all did 
growing up in Texas, and so I was out in the sun a lot." 
White House officials were questioned about why the cancer was not disclosed 
publicly until more than a month after its removal. Mrs. Bush's secretary Susan 
Whitson said the procedure was a "private matter" but when asked by the media, 
"we answered the question." 
The first lady was noted wearing a bandage on her right leg before the 
election. At the time Whitson said Mrs. Bush had a sore on her shin. In late 
October, Mrs. Bush had a biopsy because the sore was not healing, Whitson said, 
and it was determined to be a squamous cell carcinoma. 
The cancer affects the middle portion of the epidermal 
skin layer. It is more aggressive than basal cell cancer, the most common form 
of skin cancer.