Doctors to Remove Skin Lesion From Forehead of Mrs. Bush

Barbara Bush has a lesion known as a papule in the middle of her forehead that will be removed by doctors, her spokeswoman said Friday.

Mrs. Bush told her press secretary, Anna Perez, that the raised lesion is “not a big deal,” Perez said.

Papules are raised skin lesions that are usually benign and are removed by burning, freezing or excising and are then examined by a pathologist.

They are common to people who have spent a lot of time in the sun.

The papule was discovered during the 65-year-old First Lady’s routine physical examination Tuesday at Bethesda Naval Medical Center.

“She said she was fine. She got a clean bill of health,” Perez said of the First Lady’s overall condition. She said she did not know when the papule would be removed.

Mrs. Bush also was evaluated for her Graves disease, an immune system disorder that initially affected her thyroid and continues to irritate her eyes.

Perez said the First Lady no longer is taking the steroid prednisone to combat the condition, but her eye problem persists.

“She still gets some tearing, but not as much,” Perez said.

“Her condition is not any worse,” Perez said, adding that some manifestations of the disease were “self-correcting.” For instance, Mrs. Bush’s eyes no longer bulge out as they tended to do in the early stages of the disease.

She received a dose of radioactive liquid that rendered her thyroid inactive and cured that aspect of the disease.

Last winter, Mrs. Bush had surgery to remove a small skin cancer from her upper lip. The basal cell carcinoma was attributed to years of spending time in the sun, Mrs. Bush told reporters.