Moustaches are sprouting everywhere and it’s all about Men’s Health. The Movember movement began, as many good ideas do, with a bunch of blokes in a pub back in 2002. Today, it’s a leading fundraiser for research into prostate cancer and other men’s health issues in a growing number of countries.
My father Jack Spackman died in 2005 after a long battle with prostate cancer. Among his papers was a rough draft and some notes for an article he was working on to raise awareness of the importance of getting checked.
I don’t know if he ever finished it but the message is important. So, for the first time in a long time, I’ve taken my editing pen to one of his rough drafts. It’s not a pretty subject. It’s very toilet-based. And we’re going in.
I once believed there was no reason ever for me to write about human excreta. Now I shall do an about-face and write about faeces. It’s worth a shot.
Awareness and early detection are the best weapons in the cancer fight. I believe that the only worthwhile function of any article or news release is to further the education of people who haven’t yet got cancer or who have it and don’t know it.
In Bertolucci’s movie The Last Emperor there is a scene in which the best physicians in the land gather for a morning ritual at the bedchamber of the boy emperor and wait for the little lord to unload into a porcelain pot.
When a man-servant brings them the vessel the doctors peer intently at its contents. Finally, the leader of the bunch sniffs delicately, in a manner mindful of a wine judge, and declares: “Too much meat.”
It’s not just about the prostate: A lesson in health management from Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor.
I had trouble staying in my seat because I was alternately laughing like a madman and sobbing great tears of regret. If only I had the good sense to inspect my daily effluent and to take notice of any changes in its appearance. Then, I might have been alerted to my colon cancer a lot earlier.
Bertolucci, in that scene with the chamberpot, captured the essence of good health management. He highlighted the importance of excreta as a guide to the functioning of our innards.
A dozen years later I made the same mistake again. It didn’t occur to me that the problems I was experiencing in urinating could point the way to the serious problem of prostate cancer.
A newsman to the end: Some shots of Dad at work. The bottom two were taken at his last newsroom – the Tri-Valley Herald in California. He was in his final battle with prostate cancer by then, but he never lost his joy in his work, did he? Get yourselves checked lads, that’s what he’d say.
In both cases I had warning signs but I did not know what they were. I imagine there are a lot of other people making the same mistake. And the annoying thing is that the tests are usually quite simple, painless and trouble-free.
The best message is that we are all vulnerable and we should get checked out as early and as often as possible. But this is hardly a news story. Hardened reporters have heard it all before.
The deaths of celebrities and sports stars through cancer make for poignant stories but many readers probably adopt the ‘it-won’t-happen-to-me’ attitude because that is human nature.
I find stories of people who are living with cancer troubling. Most people don’t like to talk about their health problems except to close friends and relatives.
Last Goodbye: My First Editor with his Girl Reporter in San Francisco, December 2002. We knew, when this picture was taken, we wouldn’t see each other again. I used to edit his copy, for Computer-Asia and Media magazine, and the assignment to edit him one more time with this important message has been a rare and unlooked for privilege. Thanks, Jack. For Everything.
Some have good reason not to let their employer know too much about their health. And some no doubt believe they might jinx themselves if they start bragging about how they have beaten the Big C. This all makes success stories hard to find.
Scientific and medical breakthroughs make for good headlines but I don’t believe the vast majority of cancer patients are greatly interested because they realise that any new discoveries are unlikely to happen in time to help them.
The real work needs to be done among those who have not yet been diagnosed.
It basically is a public relations matter requiring the best efforts of health professionals and volunteers. One of the best ideas I encountered came from an Australian city where the police chief ordered all his officers of a certain age to present themselves for tests during a cancer awareness week.
The resulting publicity was highly effective. While the whole thing sounded like a PR exercise it worked because it had such a genuine value.
Jack lost his battle with prostate cancer on 24 August 2005. He was in a wheelchair by then as the cancer had spread to his spine. He was on his way to work at his last newspaper, the Tri-Valley Herald in California, when my stepmother Liu Ling insisted on driving him instead to the hospital. He died peacefully with Liu Ling, as ever, lovingly at his side.
In my first brush with cancer, it was only after a number of people told me how thin I had become that I decided to see a doctor. As soon as I told him that I had persistent problems with my bowel he ordered the test that was to detect advanced colon cancer. It had never occurred to me that I should pay close attention to my body’s waste matter.
In my grandmother’s day, the old folks had a saying: “Once around the pot and pointy end.” Summed up, that’s what an ideal bowel movement should be like – big enough to run around the inner circumference of the pot and its pointy end showing there had been a gentle separation from the mother lode.
Alas, this type of attention to detail is now ignored by many people. A moment or two of careful study can be of great value. A fast flush is not recommended.
© Maria Spackman 2018
While you’re here:
The Movember Foundation – Check it out, make a donation. And then get yourself checked.
Want more Spackman? Read all about him in The Spackman Files
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