ON her Monday morning show on BBC 5 Live Naga Munchetty revealed that she has been living with constant pain all her adult life.
The broadcaster revealed that she suffers from the debilitating womb condition adenomyosis. “Right now, as I sit here, talking to you, I am in pain. Constant nagging pain. In my uterus. Around my pelvis. Sometimes it runs down my thighs.”
Last weekend her husband even called an ambulance for her. "The pain was so terrible I couldn't move, turn over, sit up. I screamed non-stop for 45 minutes," Munchetty told her listeners.
It was quickly clear she is not the only one suffering from this condition. During Monday’s show Munchetty spoke to woman after woman who were dealing with excruciating pain and who had struggled for years to get a diagnosis.
It was a devastating listen. Jo from Manchester phoned in to explain how she suffered throughout her twenties but was misdiagnosed with IBS. Eventually at 36 after an MRI scan she got a diagnosis of adenomyosis. Not that that solved much.
“I’m 46 now and the last 10 years have just been a living hell.”
The terrible truth is I - and possibly many of you - have never heard of the condition. Yet it is thought that as many as one in 10 women of reproductive age could have it.
“You can’t help feeling that if this is something that men suffered from historically more would be known about it and more funding would have been put into researching this,” Jo from Manchester pointed out.
You also can’t help feeling that this is a programme that might not have happened if Munchetty hadn’t been ready to open up about her own situation. Credit to her for doing so. The result was powerful, informative radio.
Does the Irish Republic want reunification? That was the question broadcaster Andrea Catherwood asked on Radio 4 on Monday afternoon. It was a timely question in the wake of Sinn Fein winning the largest number of seats in the recent local elections in Northern Ireland.
Is a United Ireland edging closer? The answer she came up with was a decided “maybe, but maybe not”.
Polls suggest two-thirds of the population in the Republic of Ireland would vote for a united Ireland, but that support political commentators suggested is wide but not deep.
What would happen when the reality of absorbing Northern Ireland’s unionist community and the financial impact of reunification became clear? Would the Republic be up for changing the symbols of the country - the national anthem, the national flag - to make them seem more inclusive to reluctant unionists? Would any attempt at accommodation stretch as far as a Unionist veto in the newly reunified parliament?
The latter idea was given short shift. In any United Ireland unionism would make up about 13 per cent of the Irish population. The other 87% of the population of a new Ireland are unlikely to offer up a veto in those circumstances, it was suggested.
In the end, the historical desire to reunite the island of Ireland might win out in any future poll in the Republic, but the politicians of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are probably not in any hurry for such a poll to happen. Westminster might think otherwise.
Or as one of Catherwood’s contributors put it: “The people who are supposed to own Northern Ireland don’t want to own it and the people who are supposed to buy Northern Ireland don’t want to buy it.”
Finally, Nick Cave was John Wilson’s guest on the latest episode of This Cultural Life on Radio 4 last Saturday. The duo discussed Cave’s grief for the death of his sons as well as faith and love and dyeing your hair. “Allegedly dyeing my hair,” Cave pointed out when Wilson brought it up.
He also discussed creativity as an older man.
“When you’re young you don’t understand the ramifications of what you do. It’s a bit of a laugh … And that’s what makes young people’s records so wonderful, to be honest,” he suggested.
“As you get older I find that sense of play can dissipate because life becomes a serious matter, to quote Auden. So, the lyrics become kind of weighted down and that’s not good … And a lot of Bad Seeds music, especially mid-period, they’re heavy lyrics and I don’t like those lyrics.
“You need to reinvent the playfulness of the creative process each time and I think that gets harder as you get older.”
You could say the same about life itself. But if anyone knows that, it’s Nick Cave
Listen Out For: Between the Ears: Secrets of the Scottish Rainforest, Radio 3, tomorrow, 6.45pm
Scottish Makar Kathleen Jamie explores ancient woodlands near the Sound of Mull and reads the poems the experience inspires.
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