From the archives: Veteran sports journalist and broadcaster Phil Gifford switched codes when he published his health guide for men. As Donna Chisholm reports in this archive piece from 2017, he’s well qualified for the job.
In the introduction to his new book, Looking After Your Nuts & Bolts, journalist Phil Gifford says when it comes to health, he’s got skin in the game. Skin cancer, actually. And prostate cancer, bowel cancer, ulcerative colitis, a digestive tract abscess and two hip replacements.
At 70, Gifford knows the health system better than most, not only as a patient but also as a researcher, after spending much of the past two years writing his book, a Kiwi men’s health guide.
A journalist for more than 50 years, best known for his sports reporting and the columns of his comedic alter-ego, Loosehead Len, Gifford has made a living writing and talking since he was 18 but says, “I’ve never believed in a book as much as I believe in this one.”
He says his only credentials, apart from his health travails, are being a man “and jumping, sometimes staggering, through all the usual lifetime hoops: marriage, fatherhood, divorce and remarriage. In the workplace, I’ve been hired, been sacked, resigned, been sued, and countersued. Owned house, sold houses, moved houses. Lived in the country, lived in the city.”
This book - his 26th - released to mark Men’s Health Month in June, is targeted at baby boomers. “Baby-boomer men, like me, are very poor at looking after ourselves in almost every respect you can name. If there’s one thing I’d like to see from the book - and it’s such a simple thing - it is that more guys get a doctor. I really think that if they did, they would live longer. Don’t just go to a medical centre when you feel crook. Have a regular medical check and a family doctor who knows you.”
Gifford says his own GP, Graeme Washer, who’s also a surgeon, may have extended his life not once but twice: in 2008, Washer recommended he consult a urologist when his PSA blood test levels began trending up, and in 2012, he discovered bowel cancer when a pathologist had given the all-clear after a colonoscopy.
When the urologist found Gifford’s prostate was enlarged, he had a biopsy. “He called me back in, and I’ll be honest, I really thought he was going to say it was all good. He said, fairly casually really, that it wasn’t that flash. You’ve got prostate cancer.’
He talked for another 15 minutes and I couldn’t hear a thing. I was thinking, ‘I’ve got cancer, he said I’ve got cancer.’ Because the cancer was found early, the specialist recommended brachytherapy, in which tiny radioactive seeds are inserted into the prostate. The treatment succeeded and Gifford says -- “touch wood” -- subsequent PSA tests have shown no return of the cancer.
After being diagnosed in his 30s with the inflammatory bowel disease ulcerative colitis, Gifford had annual colonoscopies for more than 20 years because of the associated increased risk of bowel cancer. In hindsight, he says, he was misdiagnosed for years before doctors worked out he had colitis. “My original GP thought it was irritable bowel. He said there was something wrong but ‘see how you go’. I just left it.”
“I thought I was dying”
His condition deteriorated over the next two years. “It’s the only time in my life I seriously thought I was dying. I was throwing up and going to the toilet all the time.”
He was finally given a barium meal - a diagnostic test in which barium sulphate coats the lining of the digestive tract, allowing an accurate X-ray. “I was on a gurney in theatre when the guy doing it said, ‘There’s a group of trainee nurses here; do you mind if they observe?’
I said, ‘I really don’t care if the Luton Girls’ Choir watches. Just tell me what’s wrong with me.’” Drug treatment brought relief from the symptoms, but Gifford says after “dodging a bullet” for 25 years, he got a call from Washer a few days after his 2012 colonoscopy, expressing concern at the results.
“He said, ‘Look, you’re clear. The first pathologist has cleared them. But I’m sorry, Phil, this is the worst I’ve seen your bowel and there’s a lesion down very low that I’m really concerned about. I’m going to another pathologist for a second opinion. The second pathologist found precancerous cells. Gifford’s whole bowel was removed and a malignant tumour was subsequently diagnosed.
He says he’d always been squeamish about the idea of a colostomy bag, but as his book points out, a permanent hole in the stomach isn’t always necessary. In his case, the bowel was reconnected after three months, and there was no more need for a bag.
Reading that sort of advice might have saved him decades of worry, he says. Now, it’s in his book. It’s likely his colitis also contributed to the degenerative arthritis that led to his first hip replacement in the 1990s, then a second about four years ago. But so, too, did his years of running.
“I was never a competitive runner, but I got very, very fit in my 20s. I went nuts on jogging. I ran a Rotorua marathon at 30 and was often running 120km a week. I did it all on concrete footpaths in Auckland and in shoes that had little soles on them.”
As the extract we’ve published points out, not a good idea - far better to gallop on the grass than pound the pavement. Gifford believes his right hip gave way first because he always ran facing oncoming traffic, meaning his right leg would be lower down on the gravel verge on the cambered roads.
“I wish to God I’d run on grass. When you run on concrete, it feels fabulous because you bounce off it, whereas you sink into grass and your running isn’t as easy. But it’s the jarring that gets you.” In retrospect, Gifford says he overdid it, regularly running up to two and a half hours at a time. “That’s far too much for a normal person. I could run for 30 minutes quite quickly and barely break into a sweat and I could do that five days a week. But I should have stopped at 30 minutes.”
The hip ops were a breeze, he says, but he now needs to be careful how he exercises. The surgeon told him he shouldn’t jog, ski or play tennis or squash. With the reduction in physical activity, his weight ballooned to 125kg. (“Moron that I am, I kept eating as if I was a runner,” he says.) But after getting his weight under control, about two years ago, he found himself shedding kilos without even trying, By early last year, he was a skeletal 82kg and “felt like crap”.
He laughs at the memory of going in to TVNZ for a Jonah Lomu tribute in November 2015 and hearing the compliments - especially from make-up staff - on how well he was looking atter his “fantastic” weight loss.
“Then I got home and the Mad Butcher rings up and says, ‘You look like you’re f-_-en dying, mate. What’s the story?’”
Two hospital admissions, numerous MRI scans and blood tests last year failed to pinpoint the cause, before Gifford, fearing a return of his cancer, was hospitalised for nine days and doctors found an abscess in his digestive tract. That required the temporary reattachment of a colostomy bag, but “it doesn’t spook me any more, it’s more of a nuisance”.
It’s little wonder Gifford initially forgets to mention the basal skin cancer on his nose that Washer cut out as the bigger health issue played out. His illness delayed publication of Nuts & Bolts.
Public trust
He’s had most of his treatment, apart from the brachytherapy, in public hospitals. “I didn’t have medical insurance. I could have got it, but because of the colitis, it would have cost me an awful lot. I can understand why some people are grumpy with the public system, because if you’re in discomfort or pain, it can be very frustrating. But I truly believe that if you might die - and I know there’ll be exceptions - this is a pretty good country in which to have a life-threatening disease, because we have good people and good treatment and they will do it quickly and the treatment will probably be pretty good.”
The book ranges widely, covering sexual dysfunction, smoking, cardiovascular disease, depression and diabetes, among other topics, but doesn’t touch topical subjects these days, particularly in sport.
Gifford interviews medical experts and features first-person stories from well-known men including yachting commentator Peter Montgomery, businessman Sir Ralph Norris and musician Mike Chunn.
It’s a book even Loosehead Len might consult. As Gilford says in his introduction, “The book you’re holding now isn’t going to suggest a switch to silverbeet sandwiches, organic oat bran enemas, kale smoothies or naked sweat lodge fasting.
In the words of [comedian] Billy Connolly; What’s the point in adding three years to your life if you’re bloody miserable in all the years before them?’”
He writes from the perspective of a man who’s had a lucky escape - indeed, several - and hopes others will, too, by using a little common sense. Because his cancers were caught early, he didn’t need chemotherapy or radiotherapy. He knows how gruelling that can be after seeing his wife, Jan, endure debilitating chemo in 2011 for her aggressive, inflammatory breast cancer.
The couple have moved into suburban Auckland because Jan, a keen gardener, can no longer manage the large semi-rural property they once owned. “We’ve had to adjust our lifestyle to the new reality.”
Inspired by curiosity
Gifford says he was inspired to write the book after so many men asked about the procedures he’s had, particularly during his prostate cancer.
“There was a pattern to it. They’d ask me about the [rectal] test, and whether you still had to have it. It was always the first question they asked. One guy said to me, ‘I’m not doing that’, and I said, ‘You’re five years older than I am: you should really be getting a check once a year.’
“He said, ‘No, I’m not having some guy doing it.’ I said, ‘Well, go to a woman.’ And he said, ‘I’m not having a woman doing it.’
“A lot of the guys are spooked by it, and in general it’s because guys don’t have babies, and they’re not used to being prodded and poked. Guys don’t want anyone touching their bottoms or their private parts. You can put something on their chest but ask them to drop their tweeds and I don’t think so.”
This article was first published in the June 10, 2017 issue of the New Zealand Listener.