What Lloyd Austin’s secret surgery tells us about men of a certain age

There is a state commonly exhibited by blokes over the age of 50, writes Jim White, we can now – thanks to the US defence secretary – call ‘The Austin Way’: where we’re in constant denial about what ails us

Aged 70, which makes him a mere stripling in US political circles, Austin had been admitted into hospital before Christmas (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press All rights reserved)

Here is a new test for all men of a certain age, a gauge to assess your approach to matters of health: just exactly how Lloyd Austin are you?

This week there was a collective raising of eyebrows in US political circles following the revelation that Austin, the US defence secretary, had undergone major surgery without actually telling anyone at the White House.

Aged 70, which makes him a mere stripling in US political circles, Austin had been admitted into hospital before Christmas for an operation to remove a cancerous tumour from his prostate. After complications, he was back in the intensive care ward early in the New Year. And it was only this week, as he lay in his hospital bed attached by tubing to various bleeping gadgets, that he thought he ought to let his colleagues know of the cause of his absence from duty. This was not a hangover, Mr President. This was serious.

Given that when it comes to defence issues, Austin is the country’s most significant figure after the president, for many in the US this seemed the most bizarre behaviour. Not least in its suggestion that the lines of communication within the government had furred to the point they were about as robust as Joe Biden’s gait.

Some suggested that Austin’s secrecy was born of a fear of delivering any hint of weakness that might be picked up by political opponents. After all, Donald Trump is not exactly shy of mocking others’ health issues – including Austin, who The Donald demanded be fired “immediately” for going “missing for one week of work”.

Others may argue that it is, perhaps, Austin’s duty to use his diagnosis, no matter how intimate, as a learning experience – to share it with the US public, in order to reduce stigma, bring about awareness of the condition and so encourage other men to get checked.

Yet Austin is by no means the first politician to attempt to pretend nothing is happening and all is well. Trump’s mate Vladimir Putin has long proved equally reticent about delivering any hint of medical transparency. Not that keeping schtum necessarily helped maintain his air of invincibility: when he was almost entirely absent from public duty during the Covid pandemic, the rumour quickly took hold in Russia that rather than cowering in fear of contracting the virus, he was in fact terminally ill.

Here’s the truth: for many of us men occupying the increasingly dangerous territory beyond the age of 50, the attempt to keep any procedure secret – never mind one as significant as Austin’s – is entirely understandable. Because when it comes to health, every bloke has long done their best to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes. Particularly their own.

It is not just admitting there is an issue which we old timers fear. It is the very suggestion of discovery of something significant. For those of us of a certain age, there is a conversation we have with increasing regularity. A mate has just received a tricky medical diagnosis and tells you to “get yourself checked up now”. To which the standard reply is “yes, definitely, will do, of course”. And even as you say it, you know you won’t. Because if you do, and you get yourself probed or tested, you never know what they might discover.

This is what we should now describe as “The Austin Way”: even if we are feeling under the weather, we battle on through in a state of permanent denial. We find excuses for the most obvious of symptoms: everything from depredations in eyesight and hearing to sudden weight loss, we put down to something other than anything medical. And that is without even mentioning the precipitous increase in the need to go to the toilet.

It is us men who seem singularly incapable of facing up to our medical situation. Women tend to be much more realistic, despite the (all too gendered) odds. While men soldier on, women are far happier to admit to their own fallibility and seek clarification. Recent statistics suggest that while British women take an average of 12 days a year off work sick, men absent themselves for just five. And in most cases, that is not because they are healthier. It is likely they spend the other seven days spluttering and hacking over their colleagues, thus spreading the infection they claim not to have in the first place.

Perhaps more seriously, for the medical establishment this tendency to systematic evasion is is not simply tediously self-obsessive. It costs the system billions.

Prevention is invariably cheaper than treatment. And the earlier we blokes get ourselves tested and seen to, the quicker our issues can be resolved. Which is why, for many of his critics, Austin’s reticence represented such a missed opportunity. If he had fessed up immediately, he would have sent out a message to every man of his generation that getting yourself sorted is not a sign of weakness but one of strength. After all, if the man with his finger hovering over the button is prepared to admit to his mortality, then the rest of us can have no excuse.

Or at least that is the theory. For far too many of us in our approach to medicine, it is the kind of practical and clear-headed advice we will continue to ignore. Right now, we are all a little Lloyd Austin.