(WWJ) – June 12 marks Blue Monday, a day created to bring awareness to men’s health issues – something experts feel isn’t discussed enough.
Why? Because you never know when it might just save a life.
Dr. Roy Elrod, Chief of Staff at Detroit Receiving Hospital, tells WWJ on a new Daily J podcast, many men wait until something happens to a friend or relative before taking action on their own health.
For many here at Audacy Detroit, that event was the passing of the late 97.1 The Ticket morning host Jamie Samuelsen, who died of colorectal cancer in 2020.
His wife, WDIV journalist Christy McDonald, shared that Jamie’s story touched many of his fans across Metro Detroit.
“When we finally got to the point where he was so sick near the end before he died, he said, ‘I need to come on and I need to tell people that this can happen to them. I need to tell people to be aware and to be screened,’” McDonald said. “It was probably the most beautiful and bravest moment I had seen my husband go through, to sit and to reveal the scariest part of what he was facing, but still in his mind he wanted people to learn from it.”
She said hearing stories from fans who got screened because of him continues to be “the most overwhelming part.”
“I was sitting on a flight once and a guy passed me a napkin from like 10 rows behind me, saying ‘I want you to know that I got screened because of Jamie’s message and they found some polyps and if they had not removed them, they would’ve been cancer in a year,” she said.
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Dr. David Pinelli, Assistant Chief Medical Officer for Primary Care at McLaren Health, says on the podcast that while machismo and lack of time may play into a man’s decision to put off going to the doctor, there’s something else – fear.
“As we get older and we mature, we see our elderly parents and relatives suffer from different chronic diseases. So that drives the fear that’s the realization that ‘I don’t want that,’” Pinelli said.
“I’ll get examples of where we’ve done a screening on a lifetime smoker, found a very, very small, cancerous lesion, the treatment was minimal, and there was a cure,” he said. “As opposed to what that person experienced, where the fear comes from. The fear comes from the realization they knew the relative that had the lung cancer, suffered terribly, died of it. And that’s their fear.”
But Pinelli says there are so many screenings available in 2023 that help doctors catch cancers, for example, early.
So how do we begin the conversation about getting screened? Dr. Elrod says sometimes it takes a friend or family member experiencing it, but there are forums “where men come together who want to be open and honest.”
More information on Men's Health Week and events put on by the Men's Health Foundation can be found at miumenshealthfoundation.org. Information on colorectal screenings can be found on fightcolorectalcancer.org.
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