The diagnosis of Robert De Niro with prostate cancer several weeks ago reminded me how I’m past due for a checkup, especially since the actor’s condition “was detected at an early stage because of regular checkups,” according to De Niro’s publicist.
It’s especially pressing for guys like me, because the prostate cancer death rate is higher for African-American men than for any other racial or ethnic group, according to the American Cancer Society.
The problem is the checkup itself. Let’s be real: Bending over some table while a doctor goes rooting around your backside with a gloved digit like he’s picking his nose–but his object of examination is about a few feet south of the nose–isn’t the sexiest feeling in the world.
Comic Mario Joyner has a gag that best describes the uneasiness that guys like me may have with the procedure. Noting that he isn’t happy with his doctor’s “choice of instruments,” Joyner is nevertheless advised to relax because the doc’s vast medical education makes it no more than a clinical process.
“My [rear],” Joyner informs him, “has no idea that’s an educated finger.”
More Top Picks Best Massage Guns For Back Pain
Prostate cancer is no joke. It is the most common form of cancer among men in this country next to skin cancer, and the American Cancer Society says it is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer-related death among men.
The organization estimates that 220,900 new cases of prostate cancer will have been diagnosed by the end of this year and that 28,900 men will have died from the disease.
Of course, one notion associated with the exam tracks with Joyner’s joke–that it’s a homosexual thing. But I’m educated enough to know that isn’t the case; I don’t think guys are concerned with that, either.
The exam is just so uncomfortable and demeaning that the very thought of it makes you fidget in your seat. Don’t think so, ladies? Ask the guy next to you if he’s had his prostate examined. Look at him wiggle ever so slightly.
But despite its overall grossness, the examination could save your life, and one doctor says it doesn’t have to be such an ordeal.
“I think that it depends largely on how it’s done,” said Charles Brendler, professor and chief of urology for the University of Chicago Medical Center.
“If you explain to the patient what you’re going to do, you show the patient the position you would like him to stand in, actually show him the position–which is what I do–and you go slowly and carefully.”
Brendler blames some of his colleagues for not taking proper care with their charges: “I think the problem is that physicians heighten their patients’ anxiety by not explaining the procedure. . . . Many physicians rush it [because] they’re uncomfortable.”
It’s that haste to finish that Brendler feels causes some docs to do harm to guys.
“I don’t think the examination should be painful, and if it is, the physician is doing something wrong,” he said. “If you hurt your patient, you’re also doing him a disservice, because he won’t come back.”
To minimize the discomfort, Brendler likes patients to straddle the end of the exam table, bend fully at the waist, bend the knees slightly, and stick the butt out. Brendler’s first contact is with his hand on their abdomen so “they get used to me touching them without touching a more sensitive area first.”
“The bottom line,” Brendler said, “is the examination, properly explained and properly conducted, should not be painful.”
———-
Send e-mail for Allan Johnson to [email protected].