Almost nobody sets out to become dependent on a benzodiazepine. The prescription usually starts for a good reason — a period of severe anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia after a bereavement, a rough stretch that needed…
A lot of what men believe about HIV was formed in the 1980s and 1990s and has not been updated since. The picture that comes to mind is a fatal illness, a wasting decline, a…
For most of the last several decades syphilis was something Canadian physicians read about rather than diagnosed. That has changed. Rates have climbed substantially across Alberta and elsewhere in the country in recent years, including…
Testicular torsion is one of very few genuine emergencies in urology, and it is defined by time more than by anything else. The spermatic cord twists, the blood supply to the testicle is cut off,…
Penile cancer is genuinely rare in Canada, and most men will never encounter it. The difficulty is not how often it occurs but how long it typically takes to reach a physician. The average delay…
Bladder cancer has one of the strongest occupational associations of any cancer, and one of the longest delays between exposure and disease. The chemicals responsible — aromatic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons among them —…
Sexual health screening tends to be treated as a young man's concern. It is offered in a man's twenties, occasionally in his thirties, and then quietly drops off the list — not through any deliberate…
Most prevention advice about sexually transmitted infections is written as though people behave consistently, plan ahead, and make decisions sober. Real life is less tidy. Condoms get used sometimes and not other times, decisions get…
Circumstances change. A man who was certain at thirty-four that his family was complete may be forty-two, in a new relationship, and facing a partner who wants a child. Or a couple who made the…
The mental picture most men carry of addiction involves someone who has lost everything — the job, the licence, the house, the family. Measured against that, a man who gets up at five, works a…
