Muttley: There’s a particular kind of stubbornness that climbs Kilimanjaro twice, does aerobatics over Cirencester, and still has things on the to-do list — and Muttleymelanoma has made a website about it.
Mara: This episode follows that story: a melanoma diagnosis that began in 2013, progressed through multiple stages, and became the foundation for a serious advocacy and fundraising mission.
Muttley: Let’s start with how that journey actually unfolded, and what’s being built from it.
From diagnosis to advocacy: a life reshaped by melanoma
Mara: The post opens by setting out two reasons for the site’s existence — to inspire other patients and to educate people about UV radiation — and those two aims shape everything that follows.
Muttley: The founding statement puts it plainly: “a diagnosis is NOT the end. It’s the start of a new chapter — one that we each can shape. We can choose the words and the pictures.”
Mara: That framing matters because the post then delivers a timeline that tests exactly that claim. Stage 1b in 2013, a Breslow thickness of 0.8mm. Stage 3 in 2017 after a lump appeared in the right armpit. Then, in 2021, a phone call mid-walk: a concerning mass in the pancreas.
Muttley: A routine annual scan, a skin cancer nurse on the line, and the words “I’m afraid you have a concerning mass in your pancreas” — that is a sentence that drops a person to their knees, literally.
Mara: The post describes exactly that. The subsequent care at Blackburn Hospital, a fourteen-hour procedure, and then twelve months of immunotherapy at the Rosemere Cancer Centre in Preston, concluding in November 2022. Stage 4, and still here.
Muttley: And then 2025 brings a recurrence — tumours in the small intestine, confirmed melanoma, described as inoperable. Two rounds of Ipinivo before colitis forced a stop. The post doesn’t soften that.
Mara: It doesn’t. But it also reports the scan result that followed: the two large tumours in the lower intestine were, as the post puts it, no longer measurable by the CT scanner. Two doses of immunotherapy, and they had effectively dissolved.
Muttley: Which is the kind of sentence that earns its exclamation mark.
Mara: Running alongside all of this is the fundraising work — two Kilimanjaro climbs carrying his parents’ ashes, a biplane over Cirencester, a punishing attempt on Mount Toubkal in Morocco’s High Atlas that didn’t reach the summit. The goal is forty thousand pounds toward a mole mapping scanner for early skin cancer diagnosis.
Muttley: Because early detection, as the post makes clear, can massively increase prognosis. The scanner isn’t an abstract ambition — it’s the practical endpoint of everything the climbs and challenges are for.
Mara: And woven through all of it: two grandchildren, Lily Anna and Leo Alexander, born in 2023 and 2025 respectively — moments the post describes as ones he didn’t expect to reach. The scanxiety is real, the next round of Nivolumab is ahead, and 2026, as the post closes, brings new purpose alongside new challenges.
Muttley: A diagnosis in 2013, Kilimanjaro summits in 2023 and 2024, Mount Toubkal Basecamp in 2025 tumours dissolving in 2026 — the chapter keeps getting written.
Mara: And the work continues: the scanner fund, the advocacy, the next scan result still pending. There’s more to follow here.
