The Optimise Health Blog

I am less than 3 weeks away from my first sprint Triathlon. As you may see from the blog I intended to do a Triathlon last year to prove to myself I had fully recovered from Malignant Melanoma. This goal was thwarted last year by a slipped a disc and 5 months of standing up with sciatica. Undeterred I have entered the Castle Howard Triathlon on 21st July. Before commencing training this year I lost 6 Kg over 4 months through diet changes, mainly reducing processed carbs, cooking from fresh and reducing portions.  My weight has come down to a steady 87 Kg with benefits seen in my knees and running/swimming/cycling times. I have been training with a buddy who did the Castle Howard Triathlon last year and is fitter than me in all events - a good person to chase! I certainly have felt benefit in company and the motivation to continue training when we are tired or needing to push it to the max in cardio training. Barriers have included injury - an ankle sprained slipping on...

I had surgery for malignant melanoma on April 18th 2012. I don't normally remember dates but as this was the first general anaesthetic and the first time I had ever had significant surgery I remember the day and the events leading up to it very clearly. I spent the next 8 weeks off work willing my leg wound to close up and heal which it has now done and all the bizzare nerve jolts and tingling sensations have ended. This is a relief as a jolting leg can be quite embarrassing and disruptive when you're trying to work or talking to a client! My leg finally healed leaving an impressive war wound for which I have invented many stories in case I don't want to go into the "you survived cancer, i'm so proud of you have a medal" conversation. After the op everyone kept telling me how well I looked, to which I replied that I had only had a lump of dodgy flesh removed from my leg and groin, it was not an illness but disease prevention for the future and that I w...

Hill Climbing on the Coast to Coast Cycleroute in 2010 It's ten days since I had surgery for malignant melanoma on my left thigh.  So what has been happening? There has been an overwhelming supportive response from friends and an encouraging 2000+ blog visitors from all over the world who have seen advice on signs of concerning skin changes and self checks. My scar has been healing slowly and I have been able to do more in the last few days looked after my wife who has been a star. However as a doctor I have not been a patient patient!  I was keen to get up and around early despite advice from the anaesthetist to take it easy; in the first few days I crashed and burned both times when I went out too soon! Extra time has been a bonus. Lying on the sofa with my leg up I have become more geeky searching for parts to repair my mountain bike and tweeting more on mens health and health advice topics. Yesterday I felt increased tingling pains in my leg and found t...

Athlete Running the Race: Whitby Abbey I am two days post op for malignant melanoma with a large scar in my leg and a tender groin where nodes were removed: now the real work begins in working out my faith and moving forward. (Take a look at my previous blog posts for more on what has happened in the last few days ) Faith is not a passive slumbering thing, it is real and active, coming alive even more in challenging or life threatening circumstances.  Some would say faith is blind (in the past psychologists and atheists described accepting Christian faith as a blind leap) but currently for me it helps clarify what life is all about. Staring mortality in the face is not a popular past-time in modern culture; we are all busy, trying to get comfortable and are constantly reassured by advertising that "we are worth it" and told that we are in control. However it doesn't take much to get a glimpse of the reality lying just beneath the polished veneer of our fragile exist...

Amazingly I am now back in the comfort of my own home, sitting on the sofa and watching "In the night garden" with my daughter.  Mr Dewar the surgeon just called to check everything was going OK and to explain what happened while I was asleep - they took 2 nodes from the groin and he put in 3 layers of stitches into the leg wound and a lot of local anaesthetic. A call at home from the surgeon - that's what I call service! After the anaesthetic I awoke feeling remarkably refreshed, like when you've had the perfect amount sleep in the afternoon. My surgeon did a fantastic job of blending the scar into the normal tension lines of my leg skin, so that when I move it doesn't pull or stretch the internal stitches.  This is however not the finished product and he explained that a large leg scar can be uncomfortable to carry with movement and tightening over the years. Because I am very fair skinned the scar is likely to end up rather purple, so I have to come up ...

I have recently been diagnosed with an aggressive skin cancer called malignant melanoma. For as long as I can remember I have had a large, dark, thick, oval mole in the center of my back; I asked my wife to regularly check on it because it was hard for me to see in the mirror. Ironically this one was not the problem. Just before Christmas I noticed a freckle on my left thigh above the knee. It was itching and then became more prominent; In the past there was a light coloured freckle in this location but now it had a darker area within the old freckle that looked an odd shape. It stopped itching and I almost let it ride; but somehow this one seemed different. I promote self checking for new or changing skin lesions in my mens health clinic, so I took my own advice and decided after noting this change to see the doc. I made an appointment 2 weeks after it changed. Just before heading off for Christmas, I saw a GP who was very helpful and agreed that this new changing freckle shou...