I’m glad that prostate cancer is finally getting some serious time in the sun. For far too long it’s been unfairly overshadowed by so many other cancers. As we all know the big daddy on the block for a long time was good old lung cancer. If you didn’t have lung cancer you just weren’t worth knowing, back in the day. It was all the rage, but now cigarette smoking has been made as big a no-no as historical paedophilia and swindling the elderly not many people mention lung cancer much – it’s just become a punishment for being addicted to the joy of nicotine. Much better to focus on some different cancers these days: breast and cervical and ovarian are all over the news on a regular basis, for good reason, and thanks to global superstars like Angelina Jolie and, er, Michelle Heaton from Liberty X having a mastectomy is almost starting to look like a fashion statement, albeit a horrific one to have to make. Then you’ve got brain cancer and blood cancer and that rare form of eye cancer that took care of Caroline Aherne (who appears to have endured more varieties of cancer than you would wish on the very worst of your enemies), and testicular cancer and liver cancer and skin cancer, which is very popular in Australia. Frankly it would be refreshing if someone could discover a nice sort of cancer; a cancer that just left you feeling a bit glum at the end of the week and that was easily treated with a bit of Vitamin C and few press ups, rather than one that gave you the appearance of someone who’s just been belatedly released from a very remote Japanese prisoner of war camp. Bloody cancer. What’s it like?!
Then you have to take into account all the kids cancer. Nobody likes a kid with cancer. Hold on, that doesn’t sound right, I’ll try again. Nobody likes it when kids have cancer. There, much better. Cancer in children is particularly cruel because children haven’t even had the pleasure of building up an unhealthy combination of habits through which they can develop cancer all by themselves. To be snatched from all manner of promising avenues that their futures might offer through the bad luck of rapid malignant cell multiplication is no way to get started in life. As a reflection of this, children’s cancer is taken extra seriously and even warrants the use of special names like lymphoma and leukemia, which tend to be abandoned for adult cancer victims, at least in the news. To be robbed of one’s energy, hair, ambitions and childhood is indeed one of the great injustices of human existence. Across the world prayer groups meet and hold hands and hope that poor young Teddy or Britney be freed from the shackles of juvenile cancer, but all too often those prayers never get answered. I feel the least God could do is apologise; based on the rational assumption that he’s too busy to ever bother trying to rectify the problem altogether.
If you believe the statistics, 9 out of 6 of us know 7 out of 4 of us that have, have had or are going to have some form of cancer. There are over one hundred different cancers available to us. All of them free at the point of access. All of them very expensive from thereon in. They’re a fickle, unpredictable bunch: some we might be able to see coming if we look hard enough and others that will give us a tickle under the armpit one minute and casually, perhaps mercifully, kill us the next. You’d think the most sensible thing to do would be press on and find a cure but any cure powerful enough to knock cancer back into its grubby little box for long enough to stop worrying about it is bound to have dozens of crippling side effects to send us spiralling into all sorts of other mental and physical torment. I can’t imagine the kinds of will power and inner strength that need mustering to put up with 6 or 12 or 24 months of intense chemotherapy, but there are literally millions of people getting on with exactly that all around the world. Here’s a disease that we didn’t ask for ripping through civilisation on a daily basis and yet it can’t muster the decency to convince us once and for all that no matter how hard we try it will never go away for good and it will always come back for more. Pity there’s nothing else to worry about instead.
And cancer is why King Charles is suddenly causing a stir amongst a lot of middle aged and elderly men. Prince Philip could have woken up with a light bulb lodged up his back passage and would never had thought for a second to admit that anything was wrong, but his first-born son is a man from a (slightly) more open generation and so seems quite happy to alert the press with news that he is having an operation to eliminate some cheeky benign prostate action. I imagine that to many royal enthusiasts even the deepest secrets hidden up and beyond their King’s sphincter are fair game when it comes to gossip and idle tittle-tattle, but for me it’s not an area of the world that thrills me to spend too long considering. Who knows how long his prostate has been keeping him awake? Who knows who first went in there to administer an exploratory prod? Who knows why I’m even thinking about it? It matters little, but whatever questions lie unanswered plenty of men and quite a few women will be secretly thanking his royal highness for making cancer of the arsehole (for that is essentially what it is) a bigger agenda on the health-conscious conscience of the Great British public and beyond, grasping the baton passed from poor old, dead Bill Turnbull and assorted other famous friends. And jolly good for him too.
I went to the doctors this summer. Not for the first time in recent years I was worried about the toll of my indulgences and the frailty of my bodily system as a whole. They did my blood pressure and sent me to Hemel Hempstead for some blood tests (the clinic for which is directly opposite one of the worst ASDA’s I have ever set foot in – perhaps it’s there to add an extra layer of perspective for those in a real medical pickle) and asked me about some of my fouler habits and offered some handy tips on good health; handy tips which are quickly rendered ineffective when it comes to a weak willed glutton such as myself. The appointment booking was made (because if you want an NHS appointment these days it’s not enough to simply say that you’re ill) on the genuine pretext of another condition (I won’t spoil your appetite by humouring you with specifics) which then prompted a gentle enquiry by me about a prostate check, but apparently they don’t start doing those until you either turn fifty or you wake up one morning leaking piss, along with blood gushing giddily from your rusty sheriff’s badge as if you’ve just sat down the wrong way on a steak knife. The conclusion from all this was that I’m still alive but that one day, and hopefully not too soon, I’ll stop being alive thanks to any number of medical issues, or an unfortunate incident whereby I simply watch too much bad television and lose the will to live altogether.
They must watch a lot of bad television in the care home I walk past every weekend because most of the residents definitely seem to have lost the will to live. Unfortunately, they probably haven’t got the cash, status or round-the-clock medical attention that can be liberally afforded to our dear, great monarch. To be honest I’m glad I asked about prostate cancer in July, when the NHS was on fire with efficiency, because as of last week I imagine every man of my age is desperately holding the line and trying to get an appointment to have their balloon knot prised open on their way to work by a hairy armed Romanian GP. All thanks to Charlie III. I can see why it’s helpful but I can also see why it’s really not helpful at all – someone famous making some terrible disease more famous and causing all sorts of panic. This morning on the radio some twit blurted out that having earwax and faintly bleary hearing can be an early sign of Alzheimer’s. They didn’t seem to want to offer any hard evidence, but to be honest I doubt I would have heard it properly if they had, and so now I think I’ve got early Alzheimer’s, which isn’t something that’s putting a spring into either of my steps. Blimey, I wouldn’t even be thinking that if I hadn’t been thinking about cancer. Bloody cancer. It’s out there until it’s in there. And to the best of my knowledge that’s definitely a fact.
G B Burton. 24.01.2024
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 