One of the main benefits of growing old – beside the obvious one, not being dead yet – is the opportunity to get screened for various conditions and diseases. I am a regular participant in the bowel screening programme, by which you send a ‘stool’ sample to a laboratory to see if you have bowel cancer. Today, I have a screening for an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA).
The blurb that came with my screening invitation explained its importance: “An AAA can occur if the wall of your aorta – the main blood vessel that supplies blood to your body – gets weak and starts to expand. The condition can be serious. Screening can help to find an aneurysm so that is can be monitored or treated.” The words “THE CONDITION CAN BE SERIOUS” rather leapt out me. I signed up straight away. This wasn’t what happened when I received my very first invitation to undergo bowel cancer screening.
My initial reaction cannot be explained rationally because it wasn’t rational. I just left the testing kit on the sideboard as something that could wait until tomorrow. After all, I must have thought, I am immune to cancer. What’s the rush? Then an old acquaintance went to the GP with symptoms that didn’t appear to be anything like how you’d imagine bowel cancer to be. Anyway, he was diagnosed with cancer. Worse than that, the only treatment he was offered was palliative. There was only one thing for me to do: take the stool test, which I did that very day.
My test came back negative, that at the time of testing I probably didn’t have cancer and it was a big relief. Who knows what might have happened if my pathetic delay in taking the test had seen a cancer knew nothing about develop, grow and spread? I vowed never to be so stupid again. And today I have another test that could, conceivably extend or even save my life. Who wouldn’t want to take that test?
It turns out quite a lot of people, I’d guess probably mainly men, because us men are notoriously reluctant to visit a GP when there’s something wrong. I have been one of these men ever since I was one of those boys. To date, the conditions I ignored turned out to be relatively minor and treatable. Why did it not occur to me that leaving a particular condition might mean that it got worse and later became untreatable?
I am slightly nervous because you get the result of the screening there and then but I am also pleased I do want to go. In recent months, engulfed as I have been my various mental health demons, I have been on the borderline of not caring whether I live or die. My feelings about this procedure suggest my current mood is that I definitely want to live. It would be extremely disappointing to die at a time when I don’t want to.
So, later on, off I go to a screening centre for a very important screening. I was a complete idiot with my first ever screening. I might still be a complete idiot but I’m looking forward to having this one, good news or bad. There are often no symptoms for an AAA. Better get this out of the way so that if there is something wrong, the experts can do something about it.
