After an operation for prostate cancer and a convalescence of just over two weeks, Richard Martineau will return to his microphone at QUB radio on Monday. “I’m going back up the slope which was steeper than I thought,” confides the host to Journal.
“This is a very invasive operation. I have six sores on my body, I had a catheter for 12 days, I have to wear incontinence pants because I don’t have control of my bladder yet. I have lots of exercises to do and painkillers to take sometimes. I can’t wait to get out,” says Richard Martineau.
Always as direct, the 63-year-old columnist has no intention of mincing his words or hiding any details of his operation and the convalescence that followed from his audience.
“I’ve come a long way,” breathes the man who found himself on an operating table for three hours on October 16.
It was by chance – when he was going to have tests for diabetes and cholesterol and his doctor suggested he check his prostate – that Richard Martineau learned that his was filled with cancer cells.
“I had no symptoms! Fortunately, it did not have time to spread to the rest of the body,” continues the man for whom the word “cancer” still seems surreal.
The journalist, who says he has never been sick before, says he feared general anesthesia more than death. “I like to be in control of my affairs. In my head I am strong, I am indestructible, I have a tough skin. I asked myself: why me?
He reveals that he particularly found “debilitating and humiliating” the fact of having to wear a catheter and “having to walk slowly with his urine bag” in the corridors of the CHUM. He only slept one night in the hospital before going to convalesce at home.
“When you are sick, what you do outside no longer matters. We are all the same with our ailments. I felt that there was empathy and brotherhood between the patients. It’s a country where people are nice,” explains the host who admits to having “often whined about the health system” in the past.
“Those we called “guardian angels” during the pandemic really are them,” he confirms.
Back to the microphone
“Working keeps me alive,” assures Richard Martineau, who can’t wait to get back to his microphone and his QUB radio cronies on Monday morning.
“I’m a gang guy, my friends from QUB make me laugh. This will help me. It’s better than any medicine, I think,” he adds.
He plans to recount his operation and his convalescence in the smallest details (supporting objects, including his famous probe which caused him so much pain) during the first 15 minutes of his show. All while being comical, because the humor which can defuse almost everything also allows him to protect himself by going ahead with the blows.
Can we expect a “more calm” Richard Martineau on the air? “As my girlfriend says, they took out my prostate, not my brain,” he laughs. “Honestly, it’s in films that we see people change completely. I remain the same. Naturalness is coming back at a gallop.”
