Friday, July 20, 2018

Time for Guys to Talk about Health


Recently, I received an email message from my health insurance company. The subject line read, “Guys, we need to talk.” The email cited a study by the Cleveland Clinic, which discovered the following: 1. Men hardly ever talk about their health; 2. Men often don’t get medical help when they need it; 3. Men don’t know a lot about preventive care; and 4. Men would rather get a prostate exam from Captain Hook than actually TALK about getting a prostate exam.

OK, I made up that last one, but it fits in with the main thrust of the study, the fact that most men truly believe that talking about personal health issues is the second worst thing to emerge from 20th century society. The first worst thing, of course, is the notion that this particular question always must be answered: “Yes, but how do you FEEL about it?”

Let’s face it, guys just are not wired to be able to talk easily about stuff like that. I know I’m not. Although, to be honest, I have written about personal health issues in the past, such as: irregular heartbeat, loss of bone density, getting a colonoscopy, enlarged prostate, obscenely expensive ambulance ride, skin cancer, knee surgery, male-pattern baldness, and middle-aged onset ear hair. Yes, it’s true that I wrote about those personal topics, but I never TALKED about them. And the only reason I wrote about them is because a weekly column requires 52 topics per year. Since I can only come up with about ten legitimate topics in a 12-month period, the rest end up being my musing on the various things that are going on in my life. Just a heads up: if the Red Sox and Yankees stay neck-and-neck in the standings into September, expect at least six more columns on baseball. Yeah, even I’m dreading that.

Anyway, if I didn’t have this weekly column, then just like most men in the country, I too would have remained silent all these years about personal health issues. I guess, according to the experts, that’s not good. The Cleveland Clinic website lists the details of the study. Instead of bombarding you with a bunch of statistics (which are appropriate only with baseball-related columns), I’ll just summarize by saying the average American male doesn’t get regular check-ups often enough, doesn’t say anything to anyone when he experiences negative health symptoms, and thinks way too much about RBIs and way too little about PSAs. (If you’re not sure what those terms are, RBI stands for runs batted in, and PSA stands for something-something-something that has to do with detecting prostate cancer.)

The Cleveland Clinic also has a flashy marketing campaign called “MENtion it.” Get it? “Men” should “mention it.” (Some marketing firm got paid how much to come up with that?!) The “it” that men should mention is any type of pain, discomfort, or other health symptoms that could turn out to be a real problem.

That’s all well and good, and to be serious for one moment, it’s sad that there are thousands of guys who die every year from prostate cancer, heart problems, or an overdose of baseball statistics (see, I could only stay serious for one moment, which equals one-quarter of one run-on sentence), who could’ve survived if they saw a doctor at the first sign of something amiss.

So, fellas, let’s try to break out of our Neanderthal mindset. It’s OK to mention if something seems wrong health wise, and it’s certainly a very good idea to get a complete physical exam at least once a year. Who knows, after telling you your PSA level, the doctor might want to talk about the Red Sox and Yankees.

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