Men talking helping other men talk

Sharing a private matter

I am just listening to a programme on BBC Radio 4 – Room 5 where I think people talk about life-changing diagnoses of personal consequence. Today, it was about Jon, tall, successful, nice young family and ticking all the boxes. [BBC Radio 4 – Room 5 – Jon]

He was at Peppa Pig World with his family a couple of years ago when he discovered something wrong with his body, secretions from his penis that his GP first treated as a rash or basic infection, then he was referred to a Genitourinary Medicine (GUM) clinic where they determined he did not have a sexually transmitted infection. Now, I already suspected what it might be.

Anyway, after researching online, he found a consultant that diagnosed that he had penile cancer and it had spread to one of the lymph nodes, it was advanced, but also treatable and so they arranged the programme of treatment that has now put the cancer in remission apart from making Jon a totally changed man.

Time to be expressive

I share this story because it has resonance with me in many ways that I have written about before. As men we find it difficult to take about health issues, an irritation in a private place with the accompanying discomfort that we dismiss as trivial even as we are caught up in the embarrassment and tongue-tied when it matters.

Men are dying of conditions that are treatable if caught on time, prostate cancer especially, but also penile cancer and breast cancer, yes, men get it too. We need to cross that barrier that stops us getting help. Only you can properly explain how you feel for a doctor to begin a proper diagnosis or set you on a course of the treatment that would give you that best outcomes, you need to have your voice speaking loud, clear, without fear, shame, or embarrassment.

On sex and sexual organs, the words describing them should not be taboo and move out of the category of profanity. Penis, arse hole, scrotum, balls, buttocks, breast or whatever colloquialism or vernacular gives meaning to what you are referring to need to be words you can use freely in a describing how and what you are feeling as your life might depend on it, it is no time to be coy or shy.

You are going to be touched and prodded in places you have never been touched before or where you have not intended was touchable. Heck! Your life depends on touching the right places to feel and see what is wrong. You can’t play offensive when a situation has made you defensive.

Where my manliness was foolish

In early 2009, I allowed what appeared to be athlete’s foot to develop into a stinking sore half-aware that it might be related to a much earlier HIV diagnosis. That sore turned out to be Kaposi’s sarcoma, a kind of skin cancer and a manifestation in my own case of full-blown AIDS. My condition was that serious that at diagnosis in September of that year, I was given the prognosis that it was treatable if I could tolerate the treatment, else, I had only 5 weeks to live.

The treatment worked because there was a body of knowledge and experience garnered from people and many of whom had not survived that became the canon on which specialists could claim and assert confidence to tackle my condition. I was put on antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that I am still on and seven sessions of chemotherapy over 5 months to put the cancer in remission and reverse AIDS to the point where I have had an undetectable viral load of HIV for over 12 years.

Responsibility and acceptance

I know I contracted HIV through reckless and unsafe sex practices, I have come to terms with the responsibility and consequence of my own actions, however, I do not live in guilt or regret of that, I have a life to live and I intend for whatever time I have left to live it well. In the process, I have learnt to speak freely and liberally especially with medical personnel about how I am feeling, promptly, directly and without mincing words.

However, many diagnoses are not of commission or omission, they are accidents of nature bringing adversity, infirmity and challenges with them. We are left with ourselves and the help we can get to face these situations with the hope that we might surmount them and get to tell a better story.

My voice for my choice

To a team, I once had so say, “It’s my body first, before it is your guinea-pig.”, when I was challenging the determination for intrusive treatment not long after my ordeal with chemotherapy. To another, when I was seeking treatment for another condition, I was blunt about being aware of my mortality as a result of co-morbidities for which immediate action was taken. When I was asked to change to medication that gave me no quality of life, I presented the daily dairy of recorded side effects and contra-indications, and at my request, I was put back on my original drug regime.

I am in my knowledge and understanding as good as my medical notes, if not better. It comes from genuine self-interest and awareness along with the freedom and willingness to talk to address any medical situation I am facing. Then, I encourage the invitation and sitting in of medical students on my consultations, I believe that not only can they learn from my condition, that experience can also go into helping others. I would normally engagement them to appreciate what areas of study and research they want to specialise in.

All the help available

Obviously, for the outcomes I have had, I have to thank the open-minded, professional, considerate doctors in their humanity who have listened, understood, helped, and encouraged me on my path to wellness, their expertise applied with respect and consideration has been lifesaving in so many ways.

To us men, when you feel something, have it checked out and follow the full course with all the advice and help you can get, speak up, speak loudly and if you are not getting the best outcomes possible, challenge the orthodoxy. It is always your body first, before it is anyone’s guinea pig, no matter how good they are at what they do.

He's got a museum piece to give

Horses for courses

Jonah Falcon does conjure up the image of the whale and Jonah in the bible, only that there is something of the whale about Jonah rather than the whale swallowing him. Apparently, Jonah Falcon came to international attention with the claim that he has a 13.5-inch (34 centimetre) penis when fully erect.

Not that this has been independently verified, but the claim to fame stands that he has offered to donate his organ to the Icelandic Phallological Museum upon his death, and therein might we possibly ascertain whether the claim fits then myth.

A gift adrift

Obviously, my interest is completely nonchalant for there is only an extent to which being well-endowed might be a treasure until it becomes a burden. In the case of Mr Falcon, I am fully persuaded that his appendage does belong in a museum as the narrative suggests when it comes into its own the blood needed to keep it useful causes light-headedness that might make the person useless in that department, except where a second heart with a separate blood system exists to augment supply.

The legend goes that he once was a person of additional security scrutiny because of the bulge in his pants. Not that it proves anything and this is not a descent into penis envy, because its utility is of paramount importance, else we are just left with a mere curiosity and nothing more.

We must agree, that this material extension regardless of when it is excised does belong in a museum, or can be endowed to probably a few males in the quest for the gift of length in an area where other remedies tend to the snake oil variety.

Blog - Hello Dr Dick, my friends need a ...

That’s begging to be human

In his own words, he says, “I don’t need a fancy car, I don’t need a gun… because I do not have to prove my masculinity to anyone else, I’ll wear all pink, dammit!” Au contraire, my friend, that is not proof of masculinity as we do not normally determine it by trouser snake yards, it is more equine or cetacean than hominid.

Finally, as if one cannot be twice afflicted by gift and name, no one has surmised whether as in falconry when the falcon lands on the gloved arm, the girth of you know what is anywhere close to where the excitement is the onset of a fainting spell. We are fascinated but not interested enough to want to see more than we have been told.

Courtesy, The Week 18/09/21 Issue 1349

Hello Dr Dick, my friends need a ...

Repairs done here

A rather funny conversation ensued in my taxi cab ride to work yesterday on an interesting, but also sensitive subject.

I had just read about André van der Merwe, a South-African urologist who had headed a team of surgeons in performing the first successful penis transplant in the world in December 2014.

Whilst attempts have been made before to transplant the penis, in this case, the recipient of this wonderful gift of surgery and apparent return to manhood now can urinate, can have an erection, can experience an orgasm and can even ejaculate. I guess it is time to make babies. [BBC News]

One point to note is that South Africans have pioneered various firsts in surgery that have become commonplace as in the case of Christiaan Barnard who performed the world’s first heart transplant in 1967 and Patrick Soon-Shiong who performed the world's first full pancreas transplant in 1987.

Fixing the system

Now, Dr van der Merwe or for simplicity sake ‘Dr. Dick’ was addressing an absolute necessity in South Africa where the Xhosa boys were involved in a rite of passage, Ulwaluko which involves genital circumcision and the initiation into manhood. These circumcision rites have claimed 853 lives in the last 20 years, however, for those who survive the ordeal, they may have had a botched circumcision.

These circumcision activities done in non-sterile bush environments following traditions that one might be persuaded to suggest be abandoned are in terms, dangerous, when not performed by qualified medical personnel.

This is where Dr Dick is now in high demand for his expertise in repairing the damage caused by these crude circumcision abattoirs and I could imagine that eventually when more people are trained up to perform this procedure, other men who are not particularly gifted in the endowment area might seek generous augmentation.

Change has come

By terms, this is a difficult procedure and probably hard to master, but when this becomes commonplace, you wonder how freely men would avail themselves of this opportunity and gift when presented with the choices of length, girth, curvature, and dare I say, colour matching.

At the same time, I guess this gives the concept of organ donor a completely new meaning. The race to endow and perform has begun with new aspects of penis envy becoming the staple of tabloid fodder. The kiss-and-tell of ex-partners spilling the beans of how from the acorns they once knew oaks have suddenly sprung.

Just as Viagra has banished non-performance to the posthumous state, Dr Dick has brought to life the fact that just because you were cut badly or were born with something less wieldy, you have to live with it.

In terms of commendations, Dr Dick can have any Nobel Prize of his choosing, for Medicine and Physiology for obvious reasons, for Chemistry in that it might make a great difference, for Physics just because the earth moved, for Literature if anyone writes about their exploits and for Economics if the recipient considers becoming an International gigolo.

Pick your dick and watch it click.

Swaffelen is the Dutch word of the year

The Dutch amuse

Living in the Netherlands offers its bouts of seriousness and levity as people engage in activities that leave us expatriates amazed, astonished, aghast, amused, appalled or abashed.

This one that I write about takes it to another level of concealed lewdness that juxtaposes the supposed Calvinist roots of the Dutch with a secret appetite for the lascivious.

The authoritative dictionary publishers Van Dale fed into the Dutch propensity for end-of-year lists and nominations which resulted in a word being selected as the Dutch word of the year.

Amorously attracted to India

Swaffelen took 57% [1] of 16,000 votes and somehow the organisers of this nomination frenzy cannot explain why this word seemed to make it to the top.

Swaffelen is as verb by reason of the –en suffix but it is not a Dutch word per se, it has for some reason become common usage if not impolite when used.

It owes its notoriety to the filming of an event where a Dutch student was arrested for swaffling against the Taj Mahal in India.

Slapped across the face in titillation

I would not suggest my readers know the meaning of the word swaffle but the urban dictionary [2] gives a very phallic connotation of the male member being slapped forwards and backwards against a partner’s face.

In other cases, it is allowing the repetitive whipping of the male member on something for stimulation of self or the pleasure of others, a liberal dose of which might be orgasmic – the Dutch lexicographers have gone into overdrive looking for homonyms in other languages.

It reads like one would want to swaffle only to realise that you are not at a delicatessen but you have already produced a serving of thin-sliced phallic salami (mind what participates in a swaffle) – I grab the parts for a miraculous rescue of the mythically renowned endowments of the negroid.

I may never understand the Dutch but if swaffelen is what excites them, male and female together – each to their own – my word of the year would most certainly be Reprobates!

Source

[1] Swaffelen is Dutch word of the year – Expatica

[2] Urban Dictionary: swaffle

Explaining a stolen lunchbox

Summer season news madness

I can only find amusement in what has become a sad tragedy of hysteria that lacks scientific proof but feeds the lynch mob in causing the death of innocent people.

Being the summer season, the newswires are usually bereft of useful intelligent news that anything can be spruced up as news. In the West, that really fetches true, however, in Nigeria, some things can be stranger than fiction.

Only yesterday, my friend in African Shirts lamented the fact that the new Superman was a bit less than a man, having a slightly reduced bulge, especially if you have been assaulted before the watershed with Linford Christie’s lunch-box doing the 100 metre dash, you would know what I mean.

There’s a coal in my pocket

I remember when I was in Nigeria, we were caught in a frenzy that required all men to put a piece of coal in their pockets to prevent the unfortunate loss of their manhood.

Somehow, rumour and some information dispersion mechanism that beggars belief spreads the view that if you rub off on a stranger, your manhood would shrivel into nothingness.

The fact is, I have never seen any real proof of anyone who has a manhood of any significance before the event, then show that his manhood has been a victim of involuntary and violable shrinkage.

However, all you have to do is grab your crouch and scream, better wail, pointing your finger at a hapless passer-by who forgot to say his prayers and that person is attacked and finished off long before someone with more than two grey cells warming up each other seeks the evidence of an alleged penile miniaturisation.

To really look at this matter, after the man has been murdered by the mob, there usually is no Aha! Moment, like dip into his pockets and produce that stolen piece of hardware.

Exposé on the lickle womble

Closer to the truth, I would surmise, the accuser has had a encounter where his endowment might have been one of the dramatis personnel of the nursery rhyme – this little piggie which went wee apart from the fact that it was a wee bit on the rather wee side.

How better to explain the lack of that aspect of male chauvinistic self-assuredness exemplified in the myth of James Brown’s sex-machine if you cannot rue the day you lost your manhood?

Reference

Mob kills lecturer over alleged theft of manhood – this site does not keep permanent links to its news items – this link might change after the 27^th of July 2006.