There are a great many things we don’t know about the King’s plan to have a benign growth in his prostate dealt with by surgery. We don’t know what his symptoms are. We don’t know just how big it is. We don’t know how long he has been suffering. And nor should we.
It is one of those few issues where the 50s discretion of the tweedy, old-school royal reporter – those, now mercifully few, who you suspect know it all but won’t say – is appropriate. As the Victorian constitutionalist Walter Bagehot might have put it, there is no need to let daylight in on that majestic nook of the body regal.
But that won’t stop us bloviators from sounding off. My own two pennyworth, based on the removal of my prostate after something very nasty was found about a decade ago, is that we can be confident of one thing at least. The King, presumably hitherto in reasonable nick, is about to learn one of those humbling “we take our health for granted” lessons.
We don’t know how invasive his surgery will be, but he’ll need his sense of humour. (Those of a delicate disposition may wish to look away now.) I was warned after my operation that I would need to re-learn how to control the passing of water, and that I may not be entirely successful in doing so.
Of course, being a bloke, I took this with a pinch of salt. How difficult can it be? But when you’re standing in your hospital garb watching the equivalent of a half-open tap spattering on the floor – and there is nothing you can do to hold it back – you realise how lucky most of us have been.
Suddenly the word “dignified” and its opposite has real meaning, no longer the province of Hyacinth Bucket, let alone of Walter Bagehot. That’s your dignity the cleaners are going to have to mop up shortly.
And this, of course, was the culmination of weeks and months on the nursery slopes of discomfort and embarrassment leading up to the op. Sure, you can comfort yourself with childish jokes.
My favourite is the one in the Porridge TV sitcom when the doctor points to a specimen bottle across the room and asks politely if the patient could manage to fill it. (Punchline: “What, from here?”) Friends find a fondness for allusions to Uranus, the “digital divide” and so on. Ho-bloody-ho.
But the snap of the rubber gloves, the turning your face to the wall, the sense of invasion and, if the doctors think it’s necessary, the biopsy, feel like justice being meted out on anyone who has ever been infantile enough to tell a botty joke. It’s a grim trail, made grimmer and all the more necessary by what the diagnosis might be.
Which is exactly the problem, of course. Men, being on the whole useless, are pretty good at evasion. They pretend there is nothing wrong, that weeing several times a night is normal (which it can be), that it’ll go away and it’s all a bit personal and embarrassing, though – it is almost fatuous to point out – no more embarrassing than many medical experiences women have to confront.
When I had my prostate op and had to take time off work, I told my editor, but no one else in the office. I told myself I didn’t want to be defined by my illness or be seen as a lame duck, but looking back I was probably just embarrassed.
So hats off to the King, who could have found an excuse to take it easy and hide for a bit. But he hasn’t, and clearly wanted to add to a vital campaign to raise awareness of prostate cancer. If it is caught early, it can be stopped. Pretending it isn’t a problem is the opposite of stopping it.
The King’s problem, we are told, is benign, thankfully, and all that surgical rummaging and probing in response to unpleasant symptoms often has a happy ending. Where I was particularly lucky was in having a PSA test, thanks to the NHS, when I had no symptoms. Had I not done so I would not be here, with everything in working order.
I feel lucky, though it wasn’t luck. The test was available for a reason. Even if you don’t have symptoms, you really should get checked. And if you do have symptoms and are still hesitating, heaven help you.
To find out more about prostate issues from the NHS click here
