This piece was inspired by an incident in the film ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’, based on the diaries of Ernesto (Che) Guevara and Alberto Granada, which they wrote while on a motorbike tour of South America. The year was 1952. Guevara was in his final year as a medical student, and Grenada was a qualified biochemist.
The two travellers stopped at a farmhouse to beg shelter and food. They usually spun folk a tale about being doctors on a research trip, and that got them the free bed and food and whatever else they sought. But sometimes, as on this occasion, their host would request a medical consultation.
The pair examined a lump on the man’s neck. Guevara instantly diagnosed a tumor, but Grenada argued that it might be benign. Guevara was insistent. Later they had an argument about the situation. Guevara took the position that it was important to diagnose a tumor as soon as possible so that the man might get proper medical intervention. Granada said that the straight out diagnosis had been too brutal; “the man had shit himself,” he said. They should have lied and reassured him.
I was left wondering who had been right, Ernesto Guevara or Alberto Grenada.
On the one hand, I am sure that medical intervention does prolong life, and even enable people to survive illnesses like cancer in some cases. But at what cost?
I had a relative who, at the age of about 30, had a mastectomy. The cancer was completely gone, but it took her years to come to terms with living with the threat of its return — if she ever did. She went through hell. Years of hell.
Even those of us who have not actually been diagnosed with anything are bombarded with statistics telling us that if we are such and such an age, if we are over-weight or under-weight, if we eat a lot of fat/sugar, drink alcohol, get too much sun etc etc then we are at enhanced risk of developing one or other deadly disease. We are constantly being told that we should be getting regular tests for this and that, and doing all sorts of self-examination to catch this or that while it is still treatable…………………
This is all unpleasant in the extreme, and very, very stressful. Is there anyone who does not, when they discover some ‘lump’ somewhere on their body, instantly break out into a sweat nowadays? — and then it turns out to have been nothing at all and just disappears?
When I think of that relative of mine that survived cancer, I feel that her situation must have been like being on death row. She was living with a death sentence hanging over her. Every 6 months, or whatever it was, she went for another set of tests and then waited for the results, waited to see if she had another stay of execution.
Even those of us who are apparently healthy are, in some measure, living under the same conditions.
In other words, all this obsession with diseases and catching them early etc has, in effect, condemned us all to a life on death row. It has SERIOUSLY degraded the quality of life.
In fact, considering how detrimental an effect stress has on a person’s health, one can only wonder if all this fuss does not, in fact, do as much harm as good. Stress makes the immune system less effective, and so opens the way to all sorts of other illnesses. We seem, for example, to be having epidemics of allergies these days, and one can only wonder if that is the health price we are paying for the attempts to protect ourselves from the likes of cancer.
I feel that we have definitely developed a very unhealthy attitude to our health. In the end, I come down in favour of Alberto Grenada: lie to the man and let him live out his life in relative peace and hope that when the end comes, it comes quickly.
