Lewis

I started to dance and Asad is let the music kind of take hold of me. And then I see this girl across the room. We lock eyes, and we don't talk, we just dance.

Alex

Welcome to stories of men beneath the surface. I'm Alex Amelia. Join me, as we discover what it means to be a man in the modern era.

This episode is about trust, can we trust authority? Can we trust what we read? And what happens if we can't trust our own bodies? A few years back, Lewis was out celebrating his friend's birthday, he knew it was going to be a big night. And he knew exactly where they were going to end up.

Lewis

The best thing about the blues bar is that it's tucked away in this time did Lally and if you didn't know where it was, you would never find it. This bar is really, really cramped. And so you kind of got to fight your way in there. So as soon as you walk in there, and you hear those guitars, and they're always drumming, that same riff, it's like a pulse, you know, it's like.

And so I pushed and I squeezed through people in order to make my way to the front, because I wanted to get closer to the stage, you can feel the beat of the drum and the rhythm of the guitar, like really in your chest, and it just takes you to a completely different place. I started to dance and Asad is letting the music kind of take hold of me. And then I see this girl across the room, we lock eyes, and we don't talk, we just dance. We're just letting the music carry us and then in the guitar go around. And it kind of feels like we've got our own little space in it. Before I know it, the band's ready to take a break. And so we go outside and we catch up. I just want to know like who she was. And I wanted to know, everything I could about her. All of a sudden, it was like the world was opened up. Because there weren't all these people around anymore. And there wasn't this music kind of infecting the way we were moving. And we could just really get to know each other. But I still feel like that drive from the guitar was kind of still with me still pushing me to talk to this girl pushing me to open up about myself. From then on, we went through the excitement and the joy of getting to know each other. And over the next few weeks kind of falling for each other and getting closer to each other and sharing our feelings but Jabra and talking a lot about music. Not only was I getting to know her, and she was getting to know me, but obviously we were getting to know each other physically as well. Which is when she first kind of looked at a part of my body and was like, Is that normal? On the inside of my leg, there was like a small bump. And I kind of you know, wanted to brush it off. I wanted to be like, Oh yeah, no, it's nothing. But then as time went on, she started to notice that like, it was growing. She ended up saying, you know, you need to go and see a doctor about this. And I kind of said no, you know, you know, it'll go away, you know, it's nothing to worry about. But she was like, No, I'm a I'm a medical doctor, you need to go and see somebody about this. And so I went to the doctors and within 10 minutes of being in the hospital, I'm lying on a bed, and butt naked, kind of afraid. And I'm having some anesthetic put into me because they're going to remove this lump. Immediately. I was pretty damn frightened. I was 27 at the time, my career was getting really really good. I just met this girl who was falling head over heels in love with. And then the last word that you want to hear is cancer.

Alex

So Louis, now you live in in Australia, how is your health?

Lewis

Much better now like that night then I met Harriet we'd kind of both said how we had this idea of going to Australia and then as we got to know each other more and became closer we kind of said let's make this happen. And then when I got told about the Lymphomatoid papular osis. Funnily enough, there is there is no known cure. It is like a chronic thing that I'll have for the rest of my life. And there's also not much that's known about how to treat it. But the one thing we do know is that UV rays can be helpful and so the doctor said to me like you need to, you need to find yourself some sunshine and so I was like right, well, Australia it is to make it even better. The leading specialist is in Melbourne, Australia. And so I was like, right. His name is Chris McCormack, and he works at the Peter Mac Cancer Center in Melbourne. And so, you know, within a couple of weeks of being there and kind of meeting him and becoming his little test subject, what I've learned over the course of like the diagnosis and moving forward is it's it, it's theoretically a kind of cancer, but it's not. It's not like other kinds of cancers like lymphoma or, like other serious like skin cancer or anything like that. It's for me, and for my like, you know, sitting down at Chris McCormack, so after about six months of kind of getting tests done by him and his team, he kind of said to me, Look, it's, it's good news clinic today, because we're not particularly worried about your condition, it is something you're gonna have to manage, it's definitely something you're gonna have to keep an eye on. And if more papular form, then, you know, we will have to get them cut out before they do turn nasty. And he was, like, we're quite happy with the way that your health is. And we just want to see you once every six months. So now every six months, I go to the cancer center, and I kind of, you know, you have to strip off naked and get checked over by all these doctors. Which

Alex

mean that because getting getting naked in front of all these doctors, I mean, getting naked in front of anyone who's not your partner, is not the most pleasant thing in the world.

Lewis

Yeah, so I mean, for the people who aren't watching the video, like I'm, I'm a bit of a large gentleman as well. And so, you know, I've, I've always been a little bit self conscious about that. But I'm quite like getting naked around people. And it goes back to like, being it goes back to being a kid and bonding with my friends. And, you know, we did a lot of like, swimmin and, you know, getting up to mischief and, you know, house parties, and you know, everyone's gonna get naked at some point. And so, you know, it's, it felt quite liberated to be able to be naked around other people in like a non sexual way. As long as everything's consensual, it's interesting

Alex

because I, from the age of 21. So I'm 35. Now, from the age of 21, I moved out to New York. And I was on this internship program for a year best year of my life. But about a month into, and I'm not really said this publicly before, but I shared an anal fissure, and it was incredibly itchy. Never had any blood or anything like that, but it was just chronic itchiness all the time. And I remember the first time I had to strip off naked and get on the bench, when the doctor guiding me through, you know, knees to your chest face the wall and you just feel just incredibly vulnerable as their doctor foots on the glove puts the finger where you expect he puts the finger and it starts to make you feel in that small instance that kind of a less of a man because you're controlling every area of your life and in this particular area you're not in full control did you have that similar kind of feeling?

Lewis

I don't think there was any part of the of the like consultation or laying on the board or you know getting like having the anesthetic put it because like the bump was right next to my testicles. And so like I had to be stripped completely like naked for pretty much everything and I think there was I was so kind of wraps up in the fear of what is this thing that's happening that I never really felt that my masculinity was being being challenged by it or anything but it did it did make me feel more like a thing at like at times like I just felt like I was this you know object being looked at and studied and this kind of curiosity. As soon as I was told about it I just needed to we and like I look back and I'm like come on in a movie that's that's not very cool is it to be told you know you kind of want to get told news and be like or stoic okay, you don't want to feel like our fuck I need a piss. And I've kind of wondered you know, I was in the desert sharing a bit too much fear but um, then I remember that has been taught had cancer so fucking you know, any anything is anything is a good reaction really?

Alex

What feelings coming through. If we go back to the fact that Harriet your partner saw this, you had this specialist in, in Australia, not just in Australia, we're in Melbourne, specifically, great weather, which is what you needed for this form of cancer. I'm sure there's a lot of gratitude that that you were living and breathing from all of these things happen and because what would have happened if you hadn't met Harriet, and she didn't so happen to be a medical doctor. All of these things. He must have sat back some days and go On while I'm, I'm really grateful for this.

Lewis

Yeah, and, and not just for my situation, but also like, we moved to Australia in December 2019. And a little thing happened in, in February 2020, that kind of shook the world up a little bit. And for my partner being a doctor in London at that time, you know, she, her and her colleagues in Melbourne went through absolute hell dealing with the most lockdown city on the world, and a lot of really difficult days, difficult weeks difficult months, and constantly under pressure, constantly understaffed. And so I'm not taking anything away from how difficult their situation was with what I'm about to say, because I'm sure Harry would agree that it would have been way worse in London, you know, because London was a festering petri dish of COVID, as I'm sure you remember from, from being in London at that time. And so as much as I'm really grateful for my situation, and the fact that, you know, we got to come here, and, you know, we got to do this opportunity. Probably more grateful that she managed to be somewhere where she was a bit safer. Because, yeah, just after supporting me, emotionally, and continuing to support me emotionally, no, the last thing I want, is to have to jeopardize her personal safety at work as well, which it was, but, you know, maybe not as bad as it would have been in London. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of gratitude towards it. A lot of depression as well. It's not an easy thing to deal with, when you kind of left so unknown with what this thing is, and there's not much research on it. So you can't really like Google much about it. Because there's really, there's not that much published. And you can ask your kind of few people who were real specialists, but that's really it when it comes to finding out you know, proper information, especially when you're surrounded by medical people when your partner's a doctor and you know, a lot of them don't really know what it is. Mental Health took an absolute battering, and to be told the truth, he probably would have drink COVID Anyway, but um, you know, COVID On top of that was, it felt like a perfect storm for a bit of a, an emotional mental disaster? Yeah, I'm, I'm very, very grateful that my partner was so supportive throughout all of that, because, yeah, definitely, I would never have gone to the doctor, on my own, I just wouldn't have. And I know that because my mum had noticed a couple of years before, when I went back home, and I was wearing shorts, and she could see one of the patches. And she was like, what's that? And I think thing I said to her are I, I must have burned myself on something. It's just a random fucking excuse. I didn't know I just didn't, didn't really want to worry, or I didn't. I mean, I didn't want to worry myself, I think to be honest, and I was like, Ah, it's fine. And then the next summer, she was like, that patch is still there, you know? And I was like, oh, yeah, you know, it's just, is what it is. And so yeah, you know, it's stupid. But I'm sure a lot of us are like that, where, you know, we, we really don't want to confront what could be a problem. Because we're, you know, afraid,

Alex

men, especially when it comes to health stuff. We tried to seem like the were the authority on this particular thing. And you will even show your, your reluctance to acknowledge it in front of a medical doctor, what does that say about men as a whole, that they are so unwilling to go to the doctor or to even confront something that potentially could be quite serious?

Lewis

I've had a lot of men say to me, before that, and after that, as well, you know, you, you've got to be the master of your own health, you know, you can't let you know, how can you expect a doctor to know more about your body than you do? And those fucking degrees on their wall means they know more about your body? And so yeah, I mean, I'm not the only person who is ignored a doctor's advice and brushed it off immediately. But I tell you what, I'm certainly not like that anymore. It really transformed the way that I've thought about health care and all authority in a medical sense. And now, like, if there's a thing in the world about public health and advice, you can bet your ass I'm just, I'm withholding any ideas until I find out what doctors think about it. Because, you know, they may not get things right all the time. But the good ones do more often than they don't.

Alex

It's been a real whirlwind for years. How have you changed in that time?

Lewis

I mean, every, like a lot of things really took a big hill turn. You know, I think anyone who moves the other side of the world and doesn't change a little bit is probably not done it right. Starting with the diagnosis, like I was in a really weird kind of headspace where everything was going really well for me, but I was really kind of deepened. Self Help world and I was doing, you know, like hot yoga and I was running like 10k every day and I was eating really clean. And I was also like, wrapped up in a whole bunch of pseudoscience that I just had not applied any critical thinking skills to whatsoever. And going through this and being like a cog in the medical machine gave me access to all of these, you know, really, really highly educated individuals. And it made me look at everything that I was doing in my life through the lens of health care. And saying, right, you know, let's, you know, let's try and learn a bit more about everything that is that you're doing. This hot yoga stuff that you're doing, you know, you Googled you're like, the medical journal that I always go to first is called P NAS. Which is, you know, fun to say I'm fun to read. And so I was like, What happens if I put hot yoga into pain? So what I found was lots of evidence to suggest that what I thought about, you know, my yoga practice was maybe not that healthy for me. So I started applying that to more and more things. And it kind of just led me down the road of skepticism, learning more about the practices of pseudo science, learning more about critical thinking, learning more about logical fallacies and arguments, how are things being portrayed to you by certain media or arms or certain brands? You know, now I'm, I'm still dealing with a lot of the Mental Health fallout from the event. But I feel like I'm actually living in a world that's much clearer now, because of this event happened. I've gained the skills to be able to see through a lot of life's bullshit that before I was completely ignorant to. And I know they say that ignorance is bliss. And it might be that it is, but the truth is a bit more interesting to look at.

Alex

Why is it as guys that we do this with our health? You know, if you take your perspective, why don't you just go yeah, this is this is just as a lot, right? I will go to the doctor straightaway, like women? Do. They see something that doesn't look right, they go straight away to the doctor, but we don't? Why do we look? Why do we do that?

Lewis

Initially, I wanted to say because I feel like we're scared a lot of the time. Like, I feel like there's a part of us where we're ignorant about something. And there's this fear, like, you know, what, if it doesn't let me do the things I want to do? What if it doesn't let me go out and play sports? What if it doesn't let me go? Like, what if I have to miss a week of work, because of, you know, whatever this thing is, you know, like, I'll just, I'll push it back. And I'll keep going. Because I've got too many things that I want to do. Just think a lot of the times, we're just really ignorant to the fact that, you know, we're not often brought up saying that we can reach out for help, you know, and we can't, we're kind of taught by either people or society that we should be able to manage stuff, you know, we shouldn't have any problems, we should be able to grin and bear it and it's all bollocks, like, you know, we can, you can ask for help when we need and we shouldn't be asking for help. It's only an idiot who has a problem that can be solved and doesn't ask for help.

Alex

It's definitely the vulnerability thing, isn't it? You don't want to, you want to feel like you said, You're the master of your own body, or you must have your own health. You think that you you know better? And you don't want other people to tell you that you should get this done? You should get that done? Yeah, but I

Lewis

think I think it probably varies for different people as well. Like I don't, I don't mean, there's so much of a one fear fits all situation, but it definitely, definitely springs from, you know, none of us want to go to the doctor, you know, none of us want to tell our mates arm, I'm feeling really feeling really bad at the moment. And I've got these thoughts. And you know, I want to hash out quickly. No one wants to say our, you know, my, let my legs making this really weird, you know, like, like, pinching, feeling, and I don't know what it is. I'm just going to ignore it. I'll keep on doing what I'm doing. And it'll all be fine. But it might not be fine. And you might die. You might you might have something really serious. And you know, just being able to being able to swallow a bit of that pride and say, Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to go to the doctor and see about my weird cricket back thing. Or, I'm going to I'm going to tell my mates that um, you know, I'm really struggling with a lot of pressure at work or, you know, I'm going to tell my partner that something's happening that's making me feel jealous or, you know, whatever it might be that you're kind of trying to bottle up

Alex

is this sort of feeling that we're a strong, impenetrable soldiers and we do not want a chink in the armor. We don't want to reveal any sort of weakness. We want to have this exterior of everything is fine. When really deep down everything is not fine.

Lewis

Yeah, but you know, where does that get us? is, you know, it's, I get I get what you mean? And it's certainly true. But, you know, you just said, you know, how often do we know women in our lives who will have a problem and they'll talk to a friend or they'll have a problem, they'll go to the doctor, or they'll have a problem and they'll, you know, take a really healthy way to find the solution. And I think if we, if we need to learn anything about masculinity is maybe we can act like women a bit more, because they seem to be a bit more sensible than we are sometimes.

Alex

So after this episode, I started to explore why men do not go to the doctor. And I found after some research that 37% of men don't go to the doctor, even though they know that something wrong with them, and they need a diagnosis, or they need some further treatment. To be honest, I wasn't particularly surprised, just from speaking to different men of all different ages, and their resistance to actually go and see someone would just want to brush it under the carpet and hope it goes away. But actually, the problem gets worse in a lot of cases. And I suppose for me, anytime I've confronted an issue with my body, and I've delayed it, and put it in the back of my mind and put it off. One day, I've just said, Enough is enough. And I'm just going to get this done. So having that firm commitment, and just saying to yourself, making that decision I'm going to do it really just helps to solve all the issues, because you feel worse and worse for having put it off. What was frustrating for me after dealing with this anal fissure issue for a good four or five years, going back repeatedly, and just been given creams, creams that didn't work, which I suppose just kind of kept the problems at bay. And after a while I just said enough is enough, I'm gonna get this sorted. I do look back on that time, and why I didn't get it sorted sooner. A lot of it came down to embarrassment and not wanting to deal with the issue. I felt vulnerable, I felt exposed. I think about comparison between men and women. Why are women so good at this, seeing the doctor getting their health sorted, and men just brush it away and put it under the carpet? And then that got me thinking about young men and boys? How can we help them to shake off this stigma about seeing the doctor and about getting their health sorted? I think it's almost a blessing and a curse that we've got access to a wealth of information on the internet. Now, we can put all of our symptoms in there on Google, or we can come to some sort of conclusion. But I think also it can be a difficult one as well. That can actually lead you down the wrong path. Have you been in a situation before where you've had a medical issue? And you've put it off? Ask yourself why is that?