Bonjour from France! I’ve been looking forward to this week off for ages. I’ve been a bit rubbish at taking annual leave in the second half of this year, and I’m going to make sure I don’t do it again next year. Life and work are always super busy, and I should know better than to not take breaks to relax and recover.
Having said that, I’m away skiing, which doesn’t often make for a relaxing holiday! We’re usually on the first lift and get back on the last, but I have a feeling we might take a slightly more relaxed attitude this week. We made it out by 10am today (but still got the last one home…) Fortunately the conditions look amazing; loads of snow and sun, and didn’t want to miss it! I absolutely love being in the mountains, and hope I can continue skiing well into my 60s. In fact, that’s one reason why I pay such attention to my own exercise training program – I want to be able to do this sort of thing long after most people have had to give it up. If course there are no guarantees, but if I’m really fit and strong now, even the inevitable decline with age should still leave me able to have fun in the mountains for many more years. In this week’s video, I give you my take on cold exposure and health (at least as much as I could in 5 minutes outside at the end of the day!).
I wanted to write today though about a story you may have seen in the news this week. Davina McCall gave her first interview after having brain surgery to remove a benign growth called a colloid cyst. Whilst benign, these can still cause problems if they grow, by compressing other structures within the brain. Poor Davina, I hope she makes a quick and full recovery. But why is brain surgery relevant to a cardiology health blog though?
It was actually the way in which she found out about her brain cyst that caught my attention. She was offered a health scan by a company in return for her giving a talk on the menopause. I am a big advocate of health screening, and a big believer in preventative medicine. So many conditions can be prevented if we catch them early. In fact, I’ve just booked in myself for a bunch of blood tests, cholesterol, diabetes and so on. Many of my patients have CT coronary angiograms to look for furring up of their heart arteries (please see that section by clicking here) and I always tell them there is a small chance we will find something unexpected that needs follow up, or indeed other tests. That risk is small, but I think human nature is to believe that it will always be someone else that has the unexpected finding turn up. I wonder if that’s what Davina thought? We even have a name for these things – incidentaloma!
By coincidence, I saw a patient this week who had a CT coronary angiogram that coincidentally picked up a nodule in their liver. Thankfully, further investigations also look reassuring and benign, but nevertheless it reinforces the point that when doctors test for one thing, we might also find another. Of course, people’s attitude to this will vary – some (and I expect the majority) will think that it’s a good thing to pick up an additional finding, but for some it may cause upset and stress.
The more we have access to health screening in medicine, the more of these unexpected findings we will see, but provided people are well informed by their doctor I see this an an overall positive thing. In Davina’s case, had she not had the scan, she may not have known about her brain cyst until she developed symptoms, and treatment before a person gets symptoms is almost always the best option.
I hope you have a good week, and your preparations for Christmas are going well. We will have a mad rush when we get back, but as long as we’re all in one piece I’ll be happy!