Fantastic,very funny, this is so true the men i know tend to sit there complaing rather than go and see a doctor. Its got to be a man thing just like the man flu..lol. XXXX

That was a rather downbeat ending, David *sends hugs*

Good stuff David. I have known men to use all kinds of excuses to avoid visiting the doctor. Such as “I’m more likely to catch something even worse in the waiting room”. I think there is definately a difference in attitude by gender.

Mind you I think women find it easier to ask for time off work to go there. Male bosses certainly have no desire to know what might be wrong with your equipment and tell you to take as much time off as you need. Whereas the stereotypically more competitive male will not want to show a weakness such as illness in front of his superior, as that could be held against him in his quest for promotion…… or his conquering of the universe.

Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t fit into your male sterotype, David. I can decide in about 5 mins that I need to go to the doctor so that he can check out my stomach ache … mainly because by then I’ve already self-diagnosed that it’s cancer. Maybe it’s because I’m gay!! Oh, it’s just one thing after another!

Ha, ha, foetal David!

I didn’t know men were reluctant to visit the doctor. I know *one* man (my brother) who was reluctant to see our doctor (my father) while acting like he was dying of flu (man-type, of course). I never could figure out why. And it couldn’t have been the distance he would need to travel for a consultation — they were in separate rooms of the same house.

Now that my dad is “nought”, I also avoid the doctor. They’re expensive here.

I must be the exception that proves the rule. I’m the woman who will not go to the doctor until I absolutely have to. But then, seeing as the link between regularly bleeding from one’s nether regions and one’s attitude to seeing doctors was suggested, my cycle has always been wonky enough to make each and every time such bleeding occurs a momentous occasion. Not in a good way.

Hmm. Mr M. might well be on to something there. Must look into this.

Ah, I don’t like it when people talk about how women bleed out of there…makes me feel freaked out by my own body.

Also, in my experience the myth of men not wanting to go to the doctor is true. My Dad, for example, avoided going for years when he was going through all sorts of horrible pain and refused to admit he was ill - having been very active and running marathons and such like in his youth I guess he didn’t want to accept that he couldn’t be so active anymore - and my Mam nagged him for years. He finally went and it turned out he had Chrohn’s Disease. Considering that involes your own intestines rotting away I can’t even begin to imagine what pain he went through to avoid the doctors! Stupid Dad!

Sorry, David, women aren’t ‘programmed’ to keep better care of their body. They’re just as likely to put it off until the last moment and then panic as men. Acknowledging that it’s a gross generalisation doesn’t make it any the less likely to be false. Imagining what you’d feel if your body did all that is not a reliable test of what women feel.

Periods are bloody, messy, and horrible, but they become a fact of life, and you’re just as likely to put off looking into anything worrying about it as any other thing about your body (male or female, we all have our decidedly odd and complex bits) which you desperately want to think is working well, and then really, really don’t want to find out isn’t.