Attention, Men: No Doctor's Visit, No Sex

A couple of years ago, my dad told me that he had a cataract in his eye and that he barely could see out of it. He said he needed to get it fixed.

"Cool. Go to the doctor and get it taken care of," I said.

"I will," he replied.

One month became three; three months turned into six months; and a year later, even after numerous calls from a ticked-off son, he still had not gone to the doctor.

So one morning, when I was hosting the 6-9 a.m. talk show shift on Chicago's WVON, I told my producer, Geneen Harston, to call my dad but not to tell him he'd be on the air.

When the commercials ended, I pulled him up on the air and asked, "So, Dad, have you made that doctor's appointment?"

He started to laugh and said that he had done so the day before and that he was seeing the doctor later in the week. Luckily, he followed through; they discovered that he had a cataract growing in the other eye, too. Both eyes were taken care of, and all has been well since.

Yet what ticked me off was that here was a guy who had insurance — and a son who could pay for the bill even if he didn't have it — but still refused to go to the doctor!

My dad's story is all too familiar for those of you who must deal with fathers, brothers, uncles and husbands and male cousins, church members and co-workers who are obstinate and absolutely refuse to go to the doctor.

"Oh, I'll be fine." "I can handle the pain." "I don't want a doctor poking on me." "If it were bad, I'm sure it would hurt worse."

All typical responses and all pretty dumb.

Yes, it's true that women around the world have outlived men for years.

In the United States, the life expectancy for men is 74, and for women, it's 80. Yet when that is broken down racially, there is a huge gap between whites and blacks.

Men are dying earlier because of prostate cancer, heart disease, stroke and other maladies, and their actions play a large role in it.

Black men in particular drive me nuts. I've heard several mention that their aversion to doctors stems from the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which was a study conducted between 1932 and 1972 that monitored black sharecroppers who were infected with syphilis but didn't treat them, much less inform them that they had it.

That program, by the U.S. Public Health Service, was hideous but shouldn't be used as an excuse today.

Men no longer can be so hardheaded about their health. I've given speeches on this issue and told married women that they should say, "No doctor's visit, no sex." That'll get his attention!

We all love the men in our lives. But being silent means we are aiding them in their health dilemma, and that's wrong.

If it means lovingly reminding, fine. If you have to badger them, whatever. Just as Dad told us to eat our vegetables when we were kids — saying we'd be better off as adults because of it — we should tell him or any other man to stop acting like a child and go see the doc. It really could save his life.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning CNN contributor and the author of "Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith." Please visit his Web site at www.RolandSMartin.com. To find out more about Roland S. Martin and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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