a flat argument

It would be easy, even tempting, to start this column with those sorts of  attention-grabbing tabloid newspaper headlines like “My Health Nightmare “ or “My Cancer Scare”.

But, to be honest, when my health hit a brick wall recently I didn’t feel really scared. I felt concerned and lethargic and distracted. So it was obviously heavily on my mind. And I suspect that sometimes those things were reflected on my radio programme.

I had been losing weight (at first deliberately) and friends said my usually ruddy complexion had taken on a greyish hue. It was enough to make me go to my doctor and then to specialists for a total check up of all organs including some investigative surgery and various scans.

After all I am over sixty (turned 62 last week) and, like many men, hadn’t avoided such procedures – just hadn’t got around to it. The first was a colonoscopy. It’s a body intrusion that checks your bowels and one you don’t feel – or really even remember – because they have given you, what they call a “twilight anaesthetic”.

It was my first. The experts say everybody, especially men but women too, should have one when they turn fifty and then have one every five years. I was relieved when I got a clean slate. No colon cancer, no polyps, no blockages.

The colonoscopy is the easy bit. It’s the preparation in the previous 24 hours that knocks you around. I thought the sickest I would ever feel was after I used some dodgy chicken stock in a marinade. That was nothing compared with what happens after you drink a litre of stuff designed to clean you out to prep you.

Even though I got a green light it was a wakeup call about my health.  My doctor, and then specialist, grilled me on how much fruit and vegetables I ate. I think I said “some” or “not enough” and then confessed that there were days when I didn’t have fruit or vegetables at all. How much roughage, how much fibre, they asked – and this is not an All Bran commercial.

I had lost my appetite some months earlier and I used to be a killer with the nosebag. It was so bad that a friend joked that I should buy one of those plastic meals that Japanese restaurants put in their windows. Then when my dinner partners had finished their meals we could send the plastic version back to the kitchen for the next time.

When I forced myself to start eating properly to defeat a shrinking stomach my appetite returned. With a vengeance.

A typical day last week was: Breakfast, a nectarine, a plum, a sliced banana. Lunch, a whole-wheat sandwich with a slice of cheese, slices of tomato with cracked pepper and a wad of lettuce. Getting to the whole-wheat was a challenge. I’ll admit to liking that bleached white sliced bread that is so good for you it sticks to the roof of your mouth! Then a home-made muffin with sultanas and mixed fruit that I make daily for my staff and the News Room at 3AW.

Dinner, three small dishes from the Oriental restaurant across the street from the apartment. Fried rice, Peking red pork spare ribs and bok choy

(Chinese cabbage) with plump Chinese mushrooms. Sometimes I will have one of those protein supplement milkshakes that athletes and bodybuilders take. And I have always drunk litres of water daily.

But back to men’s health in general. And the chronic neglect. A married friend could not get her middle-aged husband to the doctor for a check up. Not even for a prostate test even though as many men die of prostate cancer each year as women die of breast cancer.

In her frustration she told me that he wouldn’t go the doctor but if he heard the slightest “ping” in his car engine the vehicle would be at the mechanics and up on the hoist in minutes. 

Former VFL and AFL star John Watts (he played for Geelong in the 1963 Grand Final is one of the smart ones. He nearly lost a leg after an old footy injury became infected. It got him into the habit of regular checkups. His doctor discovered he had prostate cancer. They got early and started treatment and years later Watts is still with us – riding a surfboard at Scarborough Beach in Perth.

He admits he got a “helluva shock” when told the prostate verdict and he should be listened to when he says: “go and see your doctor… it could save your life”.

Going back to diet. Tiny Tim was right when he said “you are what you eat”.

Fruit, vegetables, fish (for Omega 3, the brain food) exercise – even walking briskly for half an hour a day four times a week.

My new diet has permanently changed my life and I hope my health reflects it. But I have the perfect vegies guide. Last week I snuck off and married Chanel, a vegetarian.

February 19, 2006

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2006