Healthcare and Wellbeing PR

Driving back from a family event earlier this-evening, I took the gamble of continuing my 70 mile journey home despite the car warning me that I only had just over 70 miles left to run before I ran out of fuel. There was no shortage of places to stop and refuel on the way back, I simply decided to ignore the car’s multiple warnings and considered that, in general, I knew best and would take the chance. Finally reaching the petrol station near home, I felt a little flushed with victory that - mercifully - I had been right to take the gamble, despite the car reporting towards the end of journey that I had, in fact, zero more miles left to run until almost certain disaster and a good helping of embarrassment.

How similarly I often consider my health.

Watching some of the BBC Children In Need show with my daughter on Friday evening, I was moved by the story of two young girls who lost their father to a brain tumour earlier this year. My ten year-old daughter was even more upset by the story and, as she said goodnight, told me that she hoped she wouldn’t have to go through the same kind of trauma. Without thinking, I told her not to worry because I didn’t have cancer and she wasn’t to worry about it and go to sleep. I said that, of course, because that is what a father is supposed to say if he wants to avoid a lot of tears, but as I walked downstairs from her bedroom I began to really hope that I was right…

A few short months ago, many of us were defending our National Health Service from attack by some groups within America who considered such ‘healthcare for all’ would be a bad thing for their country. I didn’t get involved in the debate but considered that both sides had a point. The one that is of most relevance is how do you know when you are reaching the real ‘zero more miles left to run’ point? As a male in my mid-to-late thirties, I am beginning to run the risk of all sorts of conditions and, if I lived in the US, I’d most likely have an annual screening test to catch many of them early. Indeed, this month is ‘Movember’ and thousands of men will be growing a moustache, or ‘mo’, to raise money for The Prostate Cancer Charity, hoping to beat last year’s figure of £2.4M. There is no screening for prostate cancer in the UK, unlike PSA testing in the US, despite it still being the most common form of cancer diagnosed in men in the UK.

I haven’t seen a doctor (as a patient, that is!) for over four years and not because of ignorance or the fact that men tend to visit a doctor about a third as often as women, but because generally I feel fine, have no need to and - most importantly - nobody has asked me to. Perhaps that isn’t the right way to think, however, it could be that rather than the risky games like the one I played with my car this-evening, I should consider my own health more seriously and be encouraged to take a more responsible attitude to my wellbeing. That, for what it’s worth, is something I think we can rightly learn from our cousins across the pond and something I believe the NHS should urgently address if we are expecting it to be the custodian of the nation’s health for the next 60 years.