Marketing of Men's Health Knowledge

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Men get a raw deal with the marketing of knowledge about health. Women? They get screened for breast cancer, cervical cancer, they have blokes put on miners' helmets and climb inside them with safety lamps and picks and shovels. But we blokes get... Nothing.

A friend blogged the other day about living in France and being checked for bowel cancer as soon as you hit 50. That got me to thinking. I posted a comment on his blog about my thinking, and then it struck me. He has two loyal readers. I have two loyal readers. between us we can reach four readers, which is, as we know, half the male population of the world.

Ladies, gentlemen too, come to that, if you care about your partner, this is for you, too. If he's too much of a macho prat to check, tie him to the bed (he'll think good times are coming) and then check him out.

Men can get breast cancer.

Yes, you heard.

Now it's a lot harder to clamp a man's breast in a vice and take an x ray than it is to do a woman's, but you can check for lumps. And you can take lumps to the doctor. That's still inside the breast, of course.

Men get testicular cancer. It's not hard to examine for, all you have to do is fondle the bollocks when the scrotum's hanging loose. Anything odd, anything present on one that's absent on the other, any odd heat or coldness, take your scrotum to the quack and have him have a fondle too.

Are you going to be embarrassed? The first time you get your tackle groped well, just maybe a little. Get over it. Would a painful death be better? Will you get erect? Not a hope in hell, however attractive the doctor is. More likely you'll shrink away to pre-puberty size! Get over it.

Men get prostate cancer. "But that's yucky, isn't it? I mean that means a doctor has to poke his finger up my arsehole. That's for things that come out, nothing goes in!"

Your great grandma wasn't that squeamish. When stuff went wrong down there (I do hate that phrase!) she used to get the enema kit out of the bathroom cupboard and sluice her kids out. The bottom held no fears for her, and why should it for you? Get over it! Didn't you ever play doctors and nurses?

Right. First the prostate's inside. It's not really for amateur diagnosis because you can't tell, yourself, if it's abnormal. So yes, if you're worried, you are going to have a medic have a firkle about inside your bottom. It can be pleasurable, too. Watch the sperm donation scene in Road Trip! But that's by the by.

If you have trouble starting peeing, or have an unusually lowered pee rate, or you have never quite finished peeing, you either have a bladder infection or something astray with the prostate. Damp underwear on a bloke and a whiff of pee means "get the prostate checked out now." A sudden need to pee while standing in the cold, like when you fill your car's tank (with fuel, dummy!) means you need to get your prostate checked now.

Why do we blokes leave things for so long that, when we get to the doctor, we're terminally ill?

If this simple article strikes a note with you, spread it far and wide. Show the man in your life. Examine yourself, and get things checked. Doctors like seeing healthy people who want to make sure they stay that way.

And your dangly bits are just dangly bits. They really aren't special. Well, except to the person who loves you... probably!