AMANDA PLATELL: I decided that this year, instead of spending over £2,000 for a fortnight in a Majorcan villa in the sun I'd spend the money on getting a complete health MOT.
A strange thing happens when you hit your 60s. Having sailed through life in pretty good shape, suddenly your formerly healthy friends start falling apart - and you're not looking so tip top either.
Shocks like that start to haunt you and you wonder whether you're doing enough to look after your own health. Guilty as charged. Yes, I'm carrying a bit of weight around my once flat stomach which I put down to middle age, but how could my belly go from flattish to looking as though I was six months pregnant with twins within hours of eating?
Advertisement So I decided that this year, instead of spending over £2,000 for a fortnight in a Majorcan villa in the sun - being made fun of by my guests for my big hat, factor 50, sit-in-the-shade routine, as I never sunbathe - I'd stay in Blighty and spend the money on getting a complete health MOT.
I was going to have a full check for everything from liver health to my iron levels: he also booked me in for a heart and lung scan . Because of my history of skin cancer I booked separately to see a skin cancer specialist. And women are less likely to be taken seriously when they present with symptoms because doctors are still often painfully slow in detecting the signs in women .
So far so good, now for the blood tests. The first result made me laugh aloud — I do not have HIV, syphilis or gonorrhoea, or any other sexually transmitted diseases. Dr Dan's advice was to cut my drinking down 'a little'. Hurrah, my fear was he'd tell me to stop drinking completely.
The blood tests also confirmed I am not gluten or lactose intolerant, nor do I have coeliac disease: it seems the bloating was diet related, as since cutting out highly refined carbs such as white bread completely , it's gone. She identified four more BCCs on my chest and two suspicious new moles on my back — I've always been on the lookout for deadly melanoma as my dad had them later in life, but of course I couldn't see these and was blissfully unaware of them.