Getting Him to See a Doctor
No one likes going to the doctor's office. Since men may be less likely to go than women, and problems in personal areas often keep people away from the doctor, how do you convince a man to have his prostate checked? Below are a few suggestions.
- Tell him that most urinary problems are not the result of "getting older" — rather, they are manageable symptoms of something else.
- The prospect of cancer is more alarming, but try to use the facts to get him to the doctor. If prostate cancer is found early enough, the five-year survival rate is nearly 100%.
- Draw a parallel to breast cancer. What if his wife or daughter or sister told him that she felt a lump in her breast but was going to ignore it?
- Get him to make a list of his prostate disease symptoms so that he can track them himself over time. If the prostate disease symptoms are bad enough, looking at a list may persuade him to call the doctor's office.
- Give him a copy of the prostate disease symptoms assessment quiz or the prostate journal so that he has an "objective" measurement of his prostate disease symptoms. Offer to go with him to the doctor's office or ask a friend or family member to go with him.
- Print some material from this Web site or make photocopies from a book so that he can read the information in his own time and decide what to do.
