Lunchtime Legend

Talking Bollocks!

Now I am a massive hypochondriac, I worry about health a lot. Many a time I have had the raised eye brow from my GP as he patiently explains to me in an avuncular voice:-

“Now Ralph, in order for you to be suffering from Hysterical Pregnancy you would have to firstly be pregnant and secondly a woman!”

Or telling me that unless I had been to Africa lately it is staggeringly unlikely that I am suffering from The Ebola virus… One thing is though that I have always been able to do is talk openly to people about my imaginary ailments.

On to talking bollocks then…. Now anyone who knows me, or even regular readers of this blog will probably have an impression that not only am I quite able to talk bollocks in many ways it is my normal modus operandi!

But I have recently had a health scare; following several weeks of discomfort “downstairs” as it were I found a lump. Something that I am sure messes with the minds of normal people and terrifies them, for me as a health worrier it was chilling.

The closest I can remember to the dread I felt was the moment I realised aged 13 that my Dad had somehow found out about the parents evening I was deliberately keeping from him (due to inevitable bad feedback). I didn’t even get a telling off, he rushed to school to speak to all of my teachers without appointments, probably keeping them there later and thus given them more cause to exaggerate my failings.

That awful couple of hours waiting for him to come back, knowing my web of lies was being unravelled, the awful feeling in my stomach…. Wondering hopelessly what the worst possible outcome was going to be…. Well that was how I felt. And I was going to be feeling like this for a couple of weeks.

Now it is funny having been a “tell anyone about it…” open hypochondriac all my life I suddenly with every fibre of my being wanted to ignore this and pretend it wasn’t happening. I was even weighing up the possibility of not telling the doctor. I felt weirdly embarrassed, even ashamed and just didn’t want to tell anyone about it at all. I think a lot of men feel this way when there is maybe something badly wrong.

I did contact the doctor though who arranged for me to have an ultrasound; but with an appointment three weeks away. Now the cold, rational, calculating part of my brain realised this meant the Doctor was pretty confident that there was nothing to worry about based on my symptoms. This would have been a sensible conclusion for me to draw based on the facts and hard logic…..

Unfortunately having had pain in my nads for a couple of weeks and suddenly finding a lump down there the cold, hard, rational and logical part of my brain frankly took a leave of absence! I seemed to react to it in an entirely irrational, emotional and fear driven way.

The main symptom of this seemed to be a massive reluctance to talk to anyone close to me. I had to tell the sick manager at work (because I kept having to go off for appointments all of a sudden, and I had awesome support. Thanks loads!) and on the point of breaking down nearly in tears at work I phoned my little brother. Other than my initial reaction was “I can’t let anyone know about this” and started bottling it up loads.

This led to me doing my own head in sat in my flat (I live alone, this is normally great but not during times like this) worrying about it and thinking the worst. Somewhat embarrassingly instead of worrying that I would never get to have grandchildren I was really worried that I might die before “The elder scrolls 5” got released, and that I might not get to see the next series of “True Blood”….

Managed to get loads of really much needed support from a semi anonymous internet forum I visit (many, many thanks to my hootoo pals!). But despite this was bottling it up, worrying loads, and isolating myself. Which is surely precisely the wrong thing to do.

Given how notoriously bad most of us fellahs are at dealing with this sort of schtick I wonder how many people do just that, ignore the symptoms and bottle up the feelings, and in the long term? In the end my better judgement, and naturally gregarious nature prevailed and I ended up telling a few of the people around me who were able to make me feel loads better and give me some support.

I had phoned up the ultra sound clinic to say if they got any cancellations I would be willing to come at a moments notice because I was so worried, they agreed but explained that they didn’t expect to get one as cancellations were rare.

Luckily for me after a week or so I was phoned up and told a cancellation had indeed happened the following Monday and would I like the appointment. “Yes Please” I shouted down the phone. After a week of having basically no sleep, I not only had an extremely detailed memory map of the artex patterns on my bedroom ceiling, but I badly needed some news one way or another. The waiting was awful.

So I went to the ultrasound, it is a weird situation lying on your back with your unmentionables out whilst they are poked and prodded with the very cold (well that is my excuse anyway 😉 !) ultra sound wand. I sat there talking about the weather as if this was the most normal thing in the world to do.

I cannot describe really the feeling of relief I got at the end of the appointment when the lady explained to me that she had seen nothing to be worried about; that she would send a report to my GP but that I was in the clear!

So I am in the clear, lucky, nothing to worry about. But it really got me thinking about how it could have been the other way. Also about how badly, as a gender, us fellahs deal with this sort of thing. So I have decided as part of the Movember to join in, in letting my moustache grow for the rest of the month. The idea is to raise awareness of men’s health issues.

I think you are supposed to raise money for charity and I have not put any thought into this so will just be doing a donation to an appropriate charity; I would urge readers to do the same. Or find someone who is doing Movember properly and sponsor them.

Getting men to talk about their health issues, getting them to talk bollocks when it is actually their bollocks that are the issue is difficult. Too many blokes die every year because they didn’t seek help early enough.

Therefore I think we should all vow to talk as much bollocks as possible going forward! Hopefully things like Movember will make a difference.

04. November 2010 by Ralph Ferrett
Categories: Activism | Tags: Bollocks, Cancer, Health Anxiety, Mens Health, Movember, Testicular | 10 comments