Men are hardwired for denial. It's killing them |
"This won't take long," promised the specialist as I nervously lowered my pants. "It'll be over before you know it." He said it with such practiced nonchalance that I believed him.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
Login or signup to continue reading
Until he pulled on a latex glove and introduced me to what seemed like the longest finger in recorded history.
Physicists say time slows down near a black hole. On earth it comes to a shuddering halt during a prostate examination. The probing by the urologist probably lasted no longer than 20 seconds. But in that time it felt like mountain ranges were rising and falling, continents were colliding and an Ice Age or two had come and gone.
"Was that so bad?" he asked when it was over. I acknowledged him with an embarrassed shrug, my jaw too clenched to speak. But he was right. It was a trivial interlude in the scheme of things. I was simply acting like a typical bloke.
What is it with us men? We service our cars more diligently than the bodies that drive them. We'll scrutinise tyre pressures and forensically examine oil levels. But a twinge in our groin or increasing nightly visits to the loo have us performing credible impersonations of those Easter Island statues.
Research shows men are less likely than women to undergo preventative medical checks and far more likely to downplay symptoms and delay seeking help. Stoicism, embarrassment and a warped belief that ignoring a problem is a sign of strength all play a role.
We're hard wired for denial. And it's killing us.
Prostate cancer is now the most commonly detected male cancer. Several thousand men will die from it this year. Tens of thousands will be diagnosed. The survival rate is high but those statistics carry an asterix - outcomes improve with early detection.
So you'd imagine the public conversation around this issue would be robust. You know, plenty of taxpayer-funded public service announcements so beloved by governments, exhorting the male population to undergo testing. At the least you could expect a moment of sombre silence at a footy game to commemorate the victims.
But all we hear is a chorus of crickets.
Health shouldn't be a competition. Yet it's not hard to notice how different diseases are perceived in the public imagination. Breast cancer, thanks to decades of passionate........