‘Home Improvement’ Star Tim Allen, 72, Says His Doctors Missed a Concerning Spot on His Nose Five Times Before He Finally Pushed For Answers, Revealing Skin Cancer

Allen recalled the moment his doctor warned that removing the cancer could mean taking “most of [his] nose,” a prospect he met with equal parts anxiety and humor.

“Let me explain what I do for a living,” he joked. “You have to leave some of my nose so I can do comedy without doing 20 minutes on having no nose!”

Allen is arguably a television legend, having starred in numerous television shows and movies over the decades, including the iconic voice of “Toy Story’s” Buzz Lightyear. His portrayal of Saint Nick in “The Santa Clause” franchise helped make his movies a Hallmark classic.

Perhaps many television viewers came to know and love Allen during his 1990s sitcom “Home Improvement,” where he appeared in more than 200 episodes, portraying the lovable handyman with his own TV show while being a loving husband and father of three mischievous boys.

He later learned the spot was melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer that required surgery.

Melanoma starts in the same cells that give your skin, hair, and eyes their color—the cells in melanoma change, allowing them to spread to other organs.

WATCH: Am I at High Risk for Melanoma?

Medical oncologist, Dr. Anna Pavlick, explains who is most at risk.

“Patients at risk are patients who are fair-skinned, with blond hair and blue eyes, patients who may have a family history of melanoma, or patients who have what we call dysplastic nevus syndrome, who are just covered in thousands and thousands of moles,” Dr. Pavlick said.

RELATED: Surgery Is the Best Option For Melanoma.

Mohs Micrographic Surgery: A Precise Approach to Skin Cancer Treatment

Mohs surgery is the leading method for treating skin cancer on delicate, high-risk areas like the face, ears, and nose. This meticulous technique—known as Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS)—uses microscopic guidance to remove cancerous tissue layer by layer, ensuring that only affected areas are excised while preserving as much healthy skin as possible.

WATCH: The best surgery option for melanoma.

It’s especially effective for treating common skin cancers like basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.

During the procedure, the area is numbed with a local anesthetic. The surgeon carefully removes the visible tumor with a scalpel and immediately examines the tissue under a microscope. If cancer cells remain, the process is repeated—one layer at a time—until all cancerous cells are gone.

This methodical approach offers high cure rates, particularly when cancers are caught early, and minimizes scarring for sensitive, visible areas of the body.

“What is being done is that you’re able to remove a very conservative margin around the cancer and study it in, essentially, real time,” explains Dr. Sumaira Aasi, a professor of dermatology and Director of Mohs and Dermatologic Surgery at Stanford.

“The Mohs surgeon will take a conservative cut circumferentially around the cancer, where we’re able to preserve healthy tissue. We’re able to process the tissue and look at the cancerous tissue and know where there are still tumor cells persisting. As the Mohs surgeon removes the cancer, it’s mapped out.”

Dr. Aasi adds that the surgeon may go back specifically to the areas where the cancer cells were present and take out another conservative margin or amount of cancerous tissue and repeat the process until the cancer is out completely.

How Immunotherapy Is Offering Hope for Some Skin Cancer Patients

WATCH: Immunotherapy for Melanoma Can Work, but Side Effects are a Risk

While it was initially developed for stage 4 melanoma patients, immunotherapy might also be used earlier in the course of the disease. There’s also an immunotherapy cream, Imiquimod (Aldara), used for melanoma in situ (stage 0).

FDA-Approved Immunotherapy for Melanoma

There are several FDA-approved immunotherapies for melanoma. Each is approved for certain instances of melanoma.

• Tebentafusp-tebn (Kimmtrak)
• Aldesleukin (Proleukin)
• Atezolizumab (Tecentriq)
• Dostarlimab (Jemperli)
• Interferon alfa-2b (Intron A)
• Ipilimumab (Yervoy)
• Nivolumab (Opdivo)
• Peginterferon alfa-2b (Sylatron/PEG-Intron)
• Pembrolizumab (Keytruda)
• Talimogene laherparepvec (Imlygic)
• Imiquimod (Aldara)

The goal is to steadily reduce the risk of recurrence in all patients. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. Some people may not be candidates for this therapy, and side effects vary from person to person.

How Immunotherapy Works

Checkpoint inhibitors, like pembrolizumab, help the immune system do its job by removing the “invisibility cloak” that cancer cells use to hide. Normally, a protein called PD-1 acts like a brake on T cells, keeping them from attacking healthy cells. But cancer takes advantage of that brake to avoid being targeted. Pembrolizumab blocks PD-1, releasing the brake and letting T cells go after cancer cells more aggressively—just like they’re meant to.

“We have known for a while now that immunotherapy is a very important weapon in the fight against melanoma,”  Dr. Janice Mehnert, associate director of clinical research at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, explains to SurvivorNet.

“This study sought to investigate whether giving the anti-PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab to melanoma patients with bulky stage IIIB through stage IV disease may be superior to the standard of care approach, which is surgery followed by immunotherapy.”

The implications are significant. Instead of waiting until after surgery to deploy immunotherapy, researchers are exploring whether earlier intervention with pembrolizumab could improve outcomes for patients with more aggressive disease.

Used across multiple cancer types, immunotherapy has already revolutionized treatment paradigms. In melanoma, it’s not just a promising option—it’s a game-changer.

WATCH: Tell Your Doctor About Immunotherapy Side Effects

Immunotherapy for melanoma is not without risks. The severity of the side effects depends on whether you’re being treated with one medicine or a combination of two medicines, says Dr. Pavlick.

You have about a 10 to 15 percent chance of developing side effects such as a severe rash or severe diarrhea from a single-agent immunotherapy drug. If you have metastatic disease, you may be offered two medicines, which increases the risk of developing side effects to about 50 percent.

According to Dr. Pavlick, “Of that 50% who get side effects, at least 10% are going to have severe side effects where we may need to stop their medicine.”

Common Immunotherapy side effects include:

• Fatigue
• Nausea or stomach discomfort
• Joint pain
• Diarrhea or constipation
• Cough
• Rash
• Loss of appetite
• Changes in blood cell counts
• Fever

Spotting Skin Cancer

You should check your body for unusual spots or moles at least once a month. Any new spots or changes in size or color demand your attention.

Changes to a mole you’ve had for a while or a new growth on your skin could be signs of melanoma, according to SurvivorNet’s experts. Though these marks are unlikely to be cancerous, you’ll want to keep an eye on them and inform your doctor about any changes you notice.

Melanoma is most likely to develop on sun-exposed skin, such as the face, neck, arms, and legs. Surprisingly, it might also develop in places that have never been exposed to the sun, such as the palms of your hands or soles of your feet, your eyes or mouth, or under your nails.

SurvivorNet experts describe melanoma symptoms as:

• A sore that doesn’t heal
• Color that spreads from the border of a spot to the skin around it
• Redness or swelling that goes beyond the area of a mole.
• Itchiness, tenderness, or pain
• A change in the way the surface of a mole looks.
• Scaliness, oozing, or blood

Understanding the ABCDEs to Spot Skin Cancer

WATCH: Understanding the ABCDEs.

Dr. Cecilia Larocca, a dermatologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, recommends looking at your skin once a month for anything suspicious and using the acronym ABCDE as a checklist:

• Asymmetrical moles: If you drew a line straight down the center of the mole, would the sides match? If not, your mole is considered asymmetrical.
• Borders: The edges of your mole look irregular, jagged, or uneven; they can also indicate bleeding.
• Colors: Multiple distinct colors in the mole, including patches of pink, brown, grey, and black, but could be any color.
• Diameter: Larger than 6mm, about the size of a pencil head eraser.
• Evolution: Anything that’s changing over time, such as gaining color, losing color, pain, itching, changing shape, etc.

Dr. Larocca emphasizes that any mole that’s changing in appearance or causing symptoms should be looked at by a dermatologist as soon as possible. Black moles of any kind are also at high risk for melanoma.

Tips to Protect Your Skin from Skin Cancer

As many of us enjoy spending lots of time in the sun during the spring and summer, we must remember that the sun can harm us. For most people, there are simple ways to significantly reduce their risk of developing skin cancer.

Dermatologist Dr. Dendy Engelman offers five ways to protect your skin from cancer. Most of her recommendations are simple to follow and could save your life.

WATCH: How to protect your skin from skin cancer.

Her simple tips include:

• Avoid the sun during peak hours, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. If you are outside during those hours, protect yourself from harmful sun rays.
• Cover your skin and eyes. A wide-brim hat and sunglasses will protect your face, the top of your head, your ears, and the delicate skin around your eyes.
• Wear an SPF of 30 or higher. Dr. Engelman also recommends reapplying every few hours or after excessive sweating or swimming.
• Get an annual skin check. You can check your skin for anything that looks out of the ordinary, but you should still get a yearly check to ensure you don’t miss anything. If you notice anything unusual between checks, schedule an appointment to talk to your doctor.
• Avoid tanning beds.

If you feel like you’re just too pale, Dr. Engelman recommends a sunless tanner. “There’s absolutely no benefit to going to a tanning bed,” Dr. Engelman said.

WATCH: Melanoma treatment options

People with Darker Skin Complexions Also Face Skin Cancer Risks

A rare form of melanoma called acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM) impacted Bob Marley. According to research published in the medical journal Neoplasia, acral melanoma “arises on the non-hair-bearing skin of the nail bed, palms of the hand and soles of the feet” and is not linked to sun ultraviolet (UV) light like other skin cancers.

This rare subtype of melanoma is more common among people of Black, Hispanic/Latin, and Asian descent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says, “Non-Hispanic Black people are often diagnosed with melanoma at later stages, and the predominant histologic types of melanomas that occur in non-Hispanic Black people have poorer survival rates than the most common types among non-Hispanic white people.

Questions to Ask Your Doctor

If you are diagnosed with skin cancer, you may have some questions for your doctor. SurvivorNet suggests the following to help you on your cancer journey.

• • What type of skin cancer do I have?
  • What treatment options exist for my specific cancer?
  • Will insurance cover this treatment?
  • Would treatment through a clinical trial make sense to me?
  • What resources exist to help manage my anxiety because of this diagnosis?

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

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