Does any other disease apart from the common cold have so many treatments that give so many men little hope of a cure that is guaranteed ? No wonder this Forum cannot point anyone in the right direction and just confuses them.
Learned alot in this forum. Unfortunately one thing I learned is what works for one person, ruins another person's life. Everyone is different and it seems finding a doc who knows what he's doing is a crap shoot at best.
Not many parts of the body have such a multiplicity of aspects. ie pleasure, reproduction, urination, infection. What aims to deal with a problem in one aspect so often interferes with normal health in the other aspects, leading to compromises many find unacceptable.
The only guarantee is a miracle.
Well said Derek!
This form did save me from getting a scheduled TURP procedure by introducing me to CIC. All praise to the catheter boys!
Saved me from my scheduled TURP procedure as well! Thank you to all those that contribute and answer our questions & concerns.
Tom
Does any other disease apart from the common cold have so many treatments that give so many men little hope of a cure that is guaranteed ? No wonder this Forum cannot point anyone in the right direction and just confuses them.
You express my current sentiments exactly. That's why I chose self catherization (CIC) until which time the current "cures" make more sense. Sometimes less is more.
Jim
I credit this forum for telling me that it was OK to do cic indefinitely, because that is really what I wanted to do. My Urologist did not encourage me and I did not even know it was an option. My wife first read to me off the internet what a long and painful recovery there was from TURP and Green Light laser wasn't a whole lot better. At that time I was getting along well doing cic while waiting for surgery because I could not come even close to draining my bladder naturally; and the experience and advise on this board felt like nothing less than a God-send. Without that encouragement I probably would have gone ahead and done what the doctor had me scheduled for.
As you say if you get the wrong Guy or the procedure not best for you may have to live with the outcome. TURP obviously is less precise procedure than laser. After my successful GL I cannot understand some of the reports I read here. I had minimal bleeding after it, no urgency, minimal retention, no RE and my PSA was halved. My only complaint was that my flow was not as good as I expected. Possibly because it was a bladder neck sparing procedure. At my follow up another of his patients said the same thing, delighted but not peeing like a racehorse.
I have a lot more confidence in UK salaried NHS doctors than their American counterparts who don't want miss the chance of some Bucks. They are much more likely to push the procedure that gives them the better return without telling patients of procedures done elsewhere.
Good point. Perhaps the answer is a replacement prostate or an artificial one :-)
As dogs have a prostate perhaps theirs could be used ! Though looking at how often they c**k their legs they are probably all having problems. Fancy having a dog that had to go out six times during the night.
I love how the system edited that word and yet it does not have a spell checker to help us as it initially had when I started using the site.
Having a DRE at a check up three years ago stimulated my Vagus nerve and put me back into permanent atrial fibrillation after having had two successful cardioversions.
I think this forum helps a lot of men. The two big takeaways that are pretty clear are:
1) You can self cath indefinitely, not do any procedure and be perfectly healthy and possibly rehab your bladder.
2) There are things that can be done now that are very unlikely to cause permanent devastating side effects. The biggest risk is that that you go through it for no benefit. But if you find a good doc who has done a lot of them and match the procedure to your physiology, your odds of permanent problems are exceedingly low and your odds of getting significant relief are quite good. And #2 wasn't true as recently as 3 years ago.
Another cure that will not last as your prostate will keep on growing. One day you wont be able to get the catheter in due to its growth or if it has swollen due to prostatitis. I had prostatitis at the time I was going for heart valve surgery. Thinking that they may not want to operate due to that I advised them but they said it was OK. In the theatre they could not get a catheter in and had to use a suprapubic one.
In reality all cures have a success rate however small. One of the first two surgeons in the UK to do GL told me years after that initially we thought it was an easy operation but we soon learnt that it had to given more time and more care. Also by then he had the second generation machine at his private hospital. A friend had been one of his early patients had no post operation problems.
I can only repeat that with GL my life was back to normal activities by day three and able to go out and about without always wondering where the nearest toilet was. People were saying that they had not expected to see me at the races that day, had my operation been cancelled ?.
As friend who went to London for his had his catheter out the same afternoon and was out shopping the next day in Kings Road with his wife before going back to see his Uro and catching his plane home. That's the way it was for most of us. Another who travelled home by train the same day played Pool the next night.
Modern catheters make for a safer procedure than previously when more doing it suffered frequent infections.
Evidently Victorian gentlemen carried their rubber catheters rolled up inside their top hats and died within a few months from an infection.
Don't US docs offer a wider variety of procedures?
@Derek: One day you wont be able to get the catheter in due to its growth or if it has swollen due to prostatitis.
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Possible but not likely. Many in the SCI community self cath their entire life and a percentage of them no doubt have bph.
Jim