That's men for you Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's health: When I was in my 20s, I decided at one stage that I had throat cancer. So I did nothing about it.
I gave it a year to see what would happen and only finally went to a doctor because I was fed up with the intermittent soreness in my throat.
It turned out that all I had was tonsillitis. But what if I had really had throat cancer?
This story does not cast me in a good light but my behaviour at the time, I think, was typical of the way in which we men discount possible threats to our health.
These thoughts are prompted by a piece of research in the United States which showed that visits by men to an emergency clinic surged following important, televised sports events.
This was not, according to the researchers, because sports events make men feel unwell. Rather it is because men who feel unwell during sports events have a tendency to put off doing anything about it until after the game is over.
Indeed the hospital - the University of Maryland Medical Centre in Baltimore - experiences a 30 per cent drop in the number of men visiting its emergency department during major sports events.
The researchers will now look at the type of symptoms for which men postpone treatment. Some doctors believe there are men who will even postpone getting treated for chest pains that arise during a game. It is not so much that we men give sports a higher priority than our survival. It's more that we have a habit of discounting health issues whether we have symptoms or not.
I suspect that embarrassment and stubbornness are major culprits behind this behaviour.
Consider prostate cancer, a significant killer among older men. There are two common ways of checking for prostate cancer. One is a PSA test which involves taking a blood sample. The other is what is sometimes called a digital rectal examination.
Ah yes, there's your problem. The word "digital" does not refer here to the latest in cameras. It refers to the doctor's finger. The examination involves the doctor putting his finger up your you-know-what and poking around while you squirm.
I have no doubt at all that the death toll from prostate cancer owes a lot to this embarrassment. Men are just too shy to go and get the test done. Doctors call this "dying of embarrassment".
Women by contrast don't seem to have any problem with doctors poking at them. I admit I have not actually asked any women about this but that is the distinct impression I get.
Back to the prostate cancer - the unembarrassing way to get yourself screened is to get the PSA test mentioned earlier. It's just a matter of a blood sample being taken from the tip of your finger. Your GP or the surgery nurse will take the sample.
If the PSA test shows that further investigation is needed then you will not care where the doctor sticks his finger.
There are, of course, men who are just too darn stubborn even to get the PSA test. And there are others just like me in my 20s who are idiotic enough to hang around for a year or two without seeing a doctor even if they fear there is something wrong.
Some of this stubbornness is linked to an absolute refusal by men to concede that they could have anything as wimpish as an illness.
Is this why some men who fear they are having a heart attack insist on driving themselves to a hospital? Through traffic bad enough to give you a heart attack if you did not have one already?
And, can I honestly say that I would not do the same thing? No I can't. I just might say nothing to anybody and wait for the end of the game and I just might drive myself to the hospital. Why? Because I am still basically the same idiot that I was in my 20s.
pomorain@irish-times.ie
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.