Let’s have a look at some of the good points. It depends on what you do, how often and for how long. Stretching exercises make the body flexible and are a necessary preliminary to any sustained effort, if muscle and ligament strain is to be avoided.

But be careful of flexing exercises such as touching your toes. They may play havoc with your back, particularly if you are beyond 35 and have done little exercise for some years. You can easily damage the spinal discs.

When you bend or lift, please bend your knees. You can damage your back bending over in the shower to pick up the soap. Bend your knees.

Weightlifting increases muscle mass but it does little to improve the efficiency of your heart and lungs. Isometric exercises are also useful in increasing the strength and efficiency of muscles. They do little for the heart.

Long, slow, sustained exercise is what makes the heart and lungs work and what builds up cardiopulmonary fitness.

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There is now a variety of tests to determine if the baby has developed enough to be able to cope with life outside the womb. Ultrasound can measure the baby’s size. A hormone excreted in the mother’s urine — oestriol — can be measured and is related to the function of the placenta or afterbirth. Prior to delivery, an amniocentesis — removing some of the fluid surrounding the baby — can be used to measure substances in the fluid to check whether the foetal lungs are fully developed.

But what do women think? Many feel cheated that they are not awake when their babies are born. Few hospitals will allow the father to be present at a caesarean birth.

One way to overcome this is for the operation to be done under a local or regional anaesthetic. Caudal or spinal anaesthetics are increasingly used to reduce the pain of childbirth or to allow forceps procedures to be carried out.

This form of anaesthetic is a skilled procedure and not all anaesthetists are sufficiently skilled to use it routinely. If the anaesthetic is being used and a decision to do a caesar is made, the operation can be done by this means. But under emergency conditions, there may not be time to induce anaesthesia this way.

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Thus practitioners do not weigh cost against benefit when recommending treatments. They barely consider cost. The only benefits they usually believe to be important are those to do with size of tumours and length of life.

Like many fathers, doctors are used to being in a position of power and authority. They want their patients (children) to be obedient and submissive. They are used to telling patients what to do and they are used to patients meekly obeying their instructions. To share basic information and explain and justify their own decisions would be to weaken their power and to undermine their authority. Patients who ask questions are often treated like naughty and rebellious children. How do fathers deal with children who threaten their authority? They get angry. Or they act as though they are too busy and/or important to bother with answering such silly questions. Or they simply ignore the questions. Or they answer using words that are beyond the child’s understanding, hoping to embarass them out of asking any more questions. Or they dismiss the questions with a fatherly pat on the shoulder and a patronising statement such as: ‘Just leave it all to me’ or Til take care of you’ or ‘I know what’s best for you’. Do you recognise these tactics? Many doctors use them to establish and maintain a paternalistic type of control over their patients.

Don’t let your doctor treat you like this. You are a responsible adult and you deserve to be treated like one. It is your cancer, your comfort and your life that’s at stake. You can make better decisions for yourself than anybody else can. Don’t let anyone bully or cajole you out of your basic right to be in control of what happens to your own body.

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Related Posts:

• TREATMENT OF SYMPTOMS – SYMPTOMS AND NERVOUS TENSION (PART 3)
• CANCER: PLAYING THE PREVENT DEFENSE
• BREAST LUMPS: STRUCTURE OF FEMALE BREAST AND ITS DEVELOPMENT