This year, after many hints, Christopher Dean hung up his skates for good. At 67, he’s enjoying a long retirement. But this retirement is all the more significant after he looked death straight in the face.
The pro skater shared all about his terrifying health scare. It all started, he said, in 2015 — when he was experiencing severe stomach pain while filming Dancing On Ice.
Christopher Dean on cancer scare
Christopher had a health scare in 2015 (Credit: SplashNews)
“Until that point, the only thing that had been wrong with me was injuries I had incurred from skating,” he wrote in a 2017 guest piece for The Mirror.
“Luckily, I was due to have a routine medical check-up and it involved a colonoscopy. When the results came back, they showed I had a 2cm growth, what is known as a polyp, on my colon. I had never heard about polyps but my doctor explained they are growths on the inside lining of the colon and he said a biopsy was needed to establish if it was cancerous or not.”
Christopher added that his doctor was “convinced” it was an adenoma or adenomatous polyp. This is a type of growth which, if left alone, can become cancer.
“I found myself preparing for the fact I might have a life-changing illness. For two weeks, I thought I might need a serious operation that would have involved taking away a good chunk of my stomach. It was the longest two weeks of my life not knowing if I was going to live or die – it was a scary prospect being faced with my own mortality.”
Luckily, it was good news for Christopher — the growth was benign. “I can’t tell you the relief I felt and it really did help me put things into perspective about the previous skating injuries I had incurred,” he wrote.
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