Are ye well?

There is a cliché that claims men are far less likely to have a medical concern investigated than women. It’s no secret: Men don’t like doctors and women do. Just ask any statistician who has ever worked for an adult website.

But joking (sort of) aside…

Where every wife is perceptive to the earliest sign of ill health and always makes a suitably prompt appointment, all husbands ignore, excuse and suppress even the most obviously death-heralding symptoms until such times as a limb falls off, an organ falls out or the old heart rate falls flat.

Of course, like all gender tropes – including man flu, by the way – this is a sweeping generalisation.

However, unlike man flu, which is nothing more than a mechanism invented by women to excuse themselves from extending their famously empathetic maternal nature to the grown men in their life, I think the one about women being more willing to go the doctor actually works, in most cases anyway.

My intuition would be that, yes, in the majority of relationships, it is true that it is the lady of the house that would be the one more inclined to call the health centre and book a check-up, if and when good reason arises.

Thankfully, though, I also have the feeling that this dichotomy is less pronounced nowadays.

I reckon the male aversion to medical settings has diminished in recent years and continues to do so.

Your grandfather might say this is the result of men generally just becoming more like women. He might argue it is a manifestation of society’s maligning of masculinity and the attendant softening of one side of the species’ true nature.

“First they made us mind the weins. Then they had us staying at home. Next thing we knew, we were lying on sunbeds, eating yogurts and shaving south of the Adam’s apple. Now there are things out there that call themselves men who wouldn’t hesitate to call an ambulance at the first sign of sweatiness, shortness of breath and severe pain in the left side of their chest,” laments the offensively caricatured older man.

I, however, would be inclined to say that the rise in male health consciousness is actually the result of other forces, such as better public health campaigning.

For example, when I was at school, in the nurse’s office there was a poster that showed a football with a big lump rising from it, and on it, in big bold lettering, was the slogan, ‘Check your balls for lumps’.

I remember as a first year thinking the sign was nothing short of scandalous; almost embarrassing. Is this vulgar? Does the principal know about this?

Am I obliged to tout on the nurse? Are you allowed to describe testicles as balls when you go to secondary school? It raised so many questions in my tiny, prepubescent mind. The fact that our nurse was female somehow only seemed to make the whole psychological quagmire all the more confusing.

Anyway, I now look back and see the sense in their strategy.

By using a slightly risque pun, they got my attention, and that was the point.

As a result, I probably kept a better eye on the texture of the terrain south of the equator than I otherwise would have.

However, notwithstanding changing trends, I would still say that I am a victim of whatever primal forces have always made men so prone to self-deception when it comes to their health… Which basically means that I am always on the lookout for an excuse to think I am grand, especially when deep down I think I might not be.

For example, for about the last ten years, I’ve suffered abnormally regular and stubborn heartburn.

I didn’t pay it much mind at the start. Then I started to get a bit worried. And eventually, after hearing yet another story of how some unfortunate person had dismissed their acid reflux only to end up dead a year later, I rang the doctor.

Suffice to say, I was basically palmed off. I was told to keep an eye on my diet, not to drink too much, and to take a tablet called Omeprazole, which is used to treat and suppress a range of gastric-related problems.

Anyway, I did everything I was asked and then started taking the tablets, They did a great job, completely eradicating the heartburn.

But then I started to think: What if the heartburn is not the problem, but only a symptom of the problem.

I got on the blower to my practice again and insisted I get chatting to a GP.

After listening to my concerns, he asked me what I was really worried about.

“I don’t know, to be honest. I have a problem and nobody knows what it is. Who’s to say it couldn’t be cancer or something?”

He paused.

“Let me tell you something, Emmet. The chances of someone your age having a type of cancer that would cause this symptom are very slim.”

“Very slim, but not impossible?” I asked.

I could hear his impatience growing.

“Look. People take risks every day. Life is a risk. Every time you cross the road you take the risk that you might be hit by a bike or a car or a bus. Do you understand what I mean?” he said, patronisingly.

I questioned the strength of his analogy, and the professional veneer that coated the conversation began to crack.

That’s about two years ago. I still get heartburn most days, and I still don’t know what is causing it.

But the good news is that I’d say it’s probably nothing to worry about.