Soon after arriving in Auckland for a
six-month sojourn, I picked up the local paper (The New Zealand Herald) and was surprised to read this from
columnist Paul Holmes…
“Now, my
health.
It seems to have been a matter of speculation since last Sunday and I don't
want you to think I'm on my last legs, so here's what happened…It was all to do
with damage done by radiotherapy during the first days of the prostate cancer
treatment a decade ago…
In mid
January, my bladder shut down. That is to say, its ability to drain itself was
blocked by an enlarged prostate strangling the urethra. So I could not pee.
Meantime the bladder continued to swell and believe me, this must be one of the
most painful conditions in the world. The immediate solution is to insert a
catheter to drain the bladder, a moment of immense relief. And you walk round with
the bag attached to your leg until they can do what I call a re-bore.
Sounds weird
and unpleasant I know, but it's happened to me now a few times over the years
and you kind of get used to it.
But it's
what can happen after prostate cancer. Like any cancer, it is a nasty,
unpredictable thing, and its effects can hang round for years and change your
life forever.”
I read this,
and then re-read it to be sure. Did a prominent newspaperman just describe a
personal and painful medical condition in a public and matter of fact manner?
Why, yes, he had. And it occurred to me that one would be hard pressed to read
such an account in the mainstream American media. This in turn had me asking,
are we Americans a bit squeamish about our health? You certainly don’t see much
about bladder blockage on the opinion page of the New York Times, but it’s not just that. Rightly or wrongly, many
Americans would prefer to keep matters of reproductive and mental health (among
others) in a black box. For instance, I would wager that there are precious few
(if any) U.S. neighborhoods that feature billboards urging men to…“Give it a
shot, there’s a 1,000,001 reasons to be a donor.” Sperm donor, that is. Such
billboards are abundant here in Auckland. You also are unlikely to find your
local paper running a feature on male cosmetic surgery, entitled “Beauty and
the bloke.”
What you will find in the U.S. is a large
number of people addicted to prescription narcotics. But while the U.S. is
facing an unprecedented epidemic of prescription drug mis-use and abuse
(prescription narcotic-related deaths numbered 14,800 in year 2008), what there
is of Kiwi statistics on the topic suggests it is nary a problem here. The most
recent published report I could find documents 92 prescription drug abuse
deaths in the whole of New Zealand for the entire 2001-2002 time period. Why
the difference? From my observations so far, and from what people tell me, it
seems that Kiwis with chronic pain are better able to manage their pain with a
regiment of Tylenol and the occasional happy hour. Or it could have something
to do with the fact that hydrocodone is not available here in New Zealand. When
I asked a Kiwi physician about this drug, she replied “No, haven’t heard of it.
Related to morphine is it?”
But,
there could be more to it. Limited investigation, some of it quite dated,
suggests that there are cultural differences between Americans and Kiwis when
it comes to pain perception and disability. A comparison study (Carron et al,
1984) of one hundred some chronic low back pain in each country indicated that
“despite nearly similar between-country reports of pain frequency and
intensity, the U.S. patients, both at pre- and post-testing, reported greater
emotional and behavioral disruption as a correlate of their pain.” A more
recent qualitative study (Dean et al, 2011) of rural Kiwi workers with low back
pain observed a return-to-work ethic in spite of pain driven by a “‘can do’ attitude
to work, managing [low back pain] within the context of having job control and
flexible work practices.”
Am I saying
that Americans are prudes and wimps when it comes to health? No, I have no such
authority and we Americans would have no such monopoly. Besides, who’s to say
that health squeamishness is a detrimental trait? I’m just pondering why there
appears to be a health-minded difference between New Zealanders and Americans?
Over the
next half dozen or so columns, I will explore various angles and nuances of
this question – incorporating stories and observations from New Zealand and
relating them, when applicable, back to the U.S. system. In the process, I hope
not to, as a Kiwi might say, “Make you a whole lot of knackered,” which
translates loosely to “bore you to sleep.”
To start
this endeavor off, we must address size and population density. New Zealand is
a country roughly half the size California with only 4.5 million people. By way
of comparison, the San Francisco Bay Area registers just about this many all by
itself.
As Don, a rather sharp-tongued tour guide
told us… “Four-point-five million, that is not so many that you couldn’t fit
them all in your backyard and still have room for a game of golf.” To put this
in perspective, topics make it into The
New Zealand Herald that would surely be drowned out by other news in the
U.S. For instance, it’s front section news that a woman “abducted” a newborn
baby from its mother – after asking and receiving permission to take the baby
for a stroll. Articles also appear regularly about hospital food and clothing.
The sticky stripe socks are, by the way, considered a smashing success!
New Zealand, however, does have a high
profile epidemic in progress. A nationwide surge of late night chip (French
fry) cooking–induced house fires (1,005 of them in 2008-2009) prompted the
Kiwis to launch a public service campaign called “Don’t drink and fry.” If you have
a moment, pull up the TV ads on YouTube, they are richly entertaining. Somewhat
remarkably, this campaign seems to have contributed to a nearly 40% decrease in
frying fires in 2009-2010.
So size matters – both in the nature of
what’s news and what demands public health attention. But, there is more to
this topic of comparative squeamishness than that. Next time, I will explore
the role of fear – in particular the fear of losing health coverage or not
having it all – and how this impacts a culture’s approach to health and
wellness.
