Another Father’s Day has gone, so for another year we can forget that our uniquely male organs can kill us.
The prostate cancer message is timed around that day as an appeal to our loved ones to harangue us into getting a checkup because we apparently are too stupid to do so on our own.
If they love us, they’ll have to haul us to the doctor for a prostate exam. And if they don’t love us, they should just encourage us to stay home, smoke and gorge on fried dough.
But I’m not so sure that it’s stupidity that keeps us away from the doctor. It might just be a healthy distrust of the medical profession and mankind in general and a preference to avoid inevitable bad news.
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You can be fairly sure it will be a doctor who tells you you’re dying, so why improve those odds by seeing one?
I don’t poke my head into the attic to see if there are weird bugs or animals up there. The roof is intact, and I don’t see any holes in the soffits. Why would I look for trouble?
But as soon as I pay some “specialist” to poke his head up there, it’ll take a fortune to get rid of bats or something.
Car ownership has trained us this way.
You get the 30,000-mile check at 90,000 miles or so, provided you’ve attended to your fluids and filters along the way. Because if you take your car in for the 30,000-mile check at 30,000 miles, the service manager is going to tell you that things are awful, just awful.
You might get by for now with $700 worth of work, but you’ll just be postponing that $2,500 job.
And the car was running fine before you went in.
Many guys are simply waiting for life’s 90,000 miles.
Now, personally, I always attend to the fluids and filters. Medically, this means that for several years of I’ve been doing just about everything I know to be physically correct–eating very well, exercising, quitting cigarettes, drinking in moderation.
I’ve been in for a few minor checkups, but I never manage to return for the major workup my doctor keeps prescribing.
I suppose you could call it a gambling problem. I’m willing to bet I’m OK, but I really don’t want to know if I’m not.
I will add that this is a calculated gamble. Not one of my parents or grandparents has died of anything other than heart failure or emphysema or the trauma of falling down a flight of stairs while being old.
So I’ve taken all the steps I know of to avoid those fates. I even live in a ranch house.
As for trust, I have faith in my family doctor, of course, but beyond him, well, who are those guys, the specialists?
How do I know they aren’t having a bad day? That their wives didn’t rag on them all weekend and now they’re not thinking straight while my prostate, with all its sexual hopes and dreams, hangs in the balance?
Well, really, I don’t. So that’s a gamble too, isn’t it?
Our families will just have to haul us to the psychologist during National Problem Gambling Awareness Week next March.
But really, it might be a safer bet ultimately just to consider that 30,000-mile check, especially if you haven’t minded your fluids and filters.
After all, my cars have died on me before.
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