Sunday, August 20, 2006
Prostate Cancer - the Australian Way
I noticed a newspaper article yesterday about men, health care and education. Enough to get any man flicking to the sports pages quick time. Yet I gave it a second look because it was written by one of my favourite columnists, Australian social demographer Bernard Salt. He has the habit of making boring statistics and dry topics meaningful and writes in an amusing way with a wonderful turn of phrase.
Apparently 11,191 men died of prostate cancer in Australia in 2001; in the same year 11,791 women died of breast cancer. Yet I, and many men over 45, will be familiar with the phrase, "prostate cancer is the cancer you die with rather than die of". I've trotted it out in the past, until a few years ago when my specialist almost scared the life out of me (not the best choice of phrase but it seemed the most descriptive of my feelings at the time) with a very different prognosis. And a number of men, shocked that I would opt for surgery at the age of 52, have trotted out the same phrase to me. Why on earth have surgery, with all the sexual risks and implications that go with it, when you can just put it into the background and get on with your life?
Yet us blokes, ignorant of health issues as we are, know that breast cancer can be lethal. We know that early detection followed by action is essential. We know about daffodil day and pink ribbon day and we admire Kylie Minogue for raising the awareness in younger women of the potential risk.
After more than 6 years of regular monitoring you'd think I'd have been more likely than most to notice a campaign to encourage men to firstly go for regular check ups with their doctor and secondly not be squeamish about raising the topic of prostate cancer. Yet it wasn't till I read Bernard Salt's article that I had any idea that the Prostate Cancer Foundation launched a 'Be a Man' awareness campaign in 2005 to encourage men to speak to their doctors about prostate cancer.
I don't think us blokes are going to change much. I can't see us scanning newspapers and magazines for articles on men's health. So, its got to be a word-of-mouth campaign. We've got to be more open and talk about having prostate cancer. Even if that does raise awkward questions.
# posted by Jurek Leon @ 11:17 am 
