Why Can't Men Say, "Ow?"

"Ow. That hurts. I'm in pain." These are a few things my husband will never say. After a snowboarding mishap he blacked out, woke and noticed it hurt when his friend kept jabbing him in the stomach. He googled his symptoms and figured he was bleeding internally and he may have ruptured his spleen. Did he call an ambulance? Did he say, "Oh, shit."? No. He went to McDonald's. Then the hospital where the doctors freaked out and tended to him STAT. He still did not say, "Ouch." He said, "Dude. Where's my spleen?"

Once he jumped some gap on his motocross bike, landing wrong and blacked out. A dark ominous bruise covered his entire thigh--like he was wearing one-legged bike shorts. He would not admit anything was wrong and only saw a doctor after his balls and penis turned purple.

Then there was the "fire incident." He decided to jump through a campfire.

He burned off all the skin on his leg. His leg turned black. He did not treat it. Instead, he wrapped it in Saran wrap and went wakeboarding.

While getting stitches on his hand (sliced it open) he ate a hoagie.

His latest accident was this past weekend at his law firm's family picnic. He was making sure the coolers, grill, food, etc didn't fall off the trailer. The trailer went down a curb onto his foot. It had to move off his foot, obviously, and took his big toe toenail with it. Blood gushed from his nail bed and from the gash at the bottom of the toe. He hopped around. I had never seen him express pain and was almost delighted, but the horrified children and paralegals brought me back to reality. He said he'd drive himself to the hospital. Um. Even our three-year-old knew better. "Daddy you need help," she said.
Anyway, I drove him to emergency, he got stitches in the nail bed, stitches for the gash that went down to the tendon, and he broke his foot (just found this out yesterday. He said he didn't need a cast.) We went back to the picnic afterward. (He wanted a beer). He paddled in his canoe race the next day. He refuses to take his prescribed Vicoden. So I take it for him. Someone needs to do things right.

So why? What can't men admit they're hurt? If the same things happened to me, I'd get out of work, mothering, everything and would be hooked up to a morphine drip and watching Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Silly boys.