halbert said...
Denis,
I think a huge key point would be to tell men (and I'm assuming you're writing for the men) to let themselves be vulnerable and acknowledge that PC is bigger than they are. To not automatically do what their doctor tells them to do, on the doctor's schedule.
I think part of the reason PC is, in many ways, an invisible disease is because we're MEN. Men don't have problems. They certainly don't share them publicly. We suffer in private, and in silence. Encouraging men to stop doing that, and to bind with other men who are in it with them is a huge thing.
This is about more than doing research, and weighing choices. It's a fundamental part of western maleness. And PC strikes at the heart of our maleness. It's not a mistake that (anybody besides me remember) back in the day Reader's Digest ran a series of articles over several years called "I am Joe's ____". The one for the prostate was called "I am Joe's Man Gland". In many ways, our prostates define us as MEN. Having it fail, having to end up on Lupron for years, or having lifetime ED, or lifetime incontinence messes with our identification.
Address THAT, my friend, and you will have done a major service.
Started to share a little of my story with one woman. She cut me off... “Ah, prostate cancer’s nothin’.”
Urine leaking into my abdomen, bladder spasms, blood clots, no food for a week, blood dripping from my butt from a fingernail scraping a hemorrhoid, NPO for 2 days in the hospital....the nurse’s comment, “Men are the worst patients. All they do is complain.”
So...ya gotta be careful lol. Women were raised in this culture as well. A lot of them like strong men. Wired from the caveman days.
Certainly not all. But they were raised and live in this culture.