I felt pretty upset yesterday morning when my doctor's office said that the TURP procedure to relieve my miserable BPH symptoms was not scheduled until November 1. Almost 3 weeks! Three more weeks of walking around with, being annoyed by, this Lousy Device I've got to wear so that urine won't stay inside my body, screw up my bladder and kidneys and make life incredibly uncomfortable.
The worst part is that I can't do anything the least bit physical. No running, of course, but also no weight lifting, no aerobic machines, no swimming, no push ups, no...well, you get the idea. And these are among the things that I love, the things that make me feel so good, so strong, so in shape, so, well, so not my age!
In fact, at my lowest, this makes me feel kind of old and decrepit. Cautious, careful and like my life is now spent walking up hill.
Oddly, however, aside from these limitations, it's not been as physically uncomfortable as seemed possible. I'm walking okay, going up and down subway stairs okay, carrying what I need to carry and getting on with my life as usual. Just not the working out stuff that I crave.
Life is all up hill, stairs have been okay and I can't run or work out. How can this all be put together?
I've decided to walk my building's staircase. Six stories. Slowly. Using the handrail. But to the top I'm going to go, then down on the elevator an back up again. A bunch of times. Just now, 3 trips. 18 floors of up stairs walking. Nicely parallels my life.
So far, no apparent ill affects. I'm going to try it again later. 4 trips. If I've got to wait till November 1, I won't wait laying down. If I can help it.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
BAD PARTS OF AGING
There are lots of good, quite young, parts of me. My hair, for example. It's really dark. No grey at all. True, I pluck out the occasional old looking strand, but I don't think that counts. Pretty good hair. And my lungs. Youthful, too. Efficiently takes in so much oxygen with each gulp that a test says it's like a 29 year old's. So I can run around and race around and sprint around with a lot of folks who claim to be much younger. My knees, my quads, pretty much the same thing.
But not my prostate. Oh, it functions alright, as far as I know. But it acts in a really old manner. Like in many men as we age it keeps getting bigger. Big enough to hug my urethra and impinge on the urine flow from the bladder. And sometimes to totally stop it. BAD crisis of aging!
That happened for the first time 5 months ago so I began to take medication. That made it okay till last Monday. Then, sitting in my office, listening to a patient, wondering if it could be really happening again, my hand, holding the pad I use to take notes, began to shake violently. This can't be! But it was. No more pee and the awful growing discomfort that comes with it. As quick as I could, I raced uptown to my urologist.
"Have a seat," said the receptionist, but I couldn't sit down. Fortunately my doctor had me into his office quickly and hooked me up with the dreaded catheter. Immediate relief! When I handed over the $50 copay a bit later he joked: "I wonder how much this would've been worth to you before I fixed you up!"
The plan was to leave the catheter in place till the following Wednesday....9 days...to allow things to cool down and regain function. Then we'd decide what to do next.
Nine days! Nine days of no running, no athletics, no working out. Nine days of walking around EVER so gingerly. Nine days of difficulty sleeping, general discomfort and more than a bit of depression. Yes, these are some of the bad things about aging.
Still, there's another, more important bad thing....
I couldn't see how 9 days could pass, but, of course, they did. One of the things that sustained me through this time was my love of the election and excitement about how well Obama was doing. I plunged into reading the analysis, the polls, the predicitions. I became a BIG fan of the wonderful 538 Blog. And I grew confident that Obama was on the verge of victory.
As important as I think that is for the nation, it paled, of course, to its personal meaning: It cheered me up.
All this, of course, made me keenly aware of the import of the upcoming Presidential Debate. And that was scheduled for Wednesday evening, just hours after my doctor's appointment. Great big day!
The day finally arrived and the doctor removed the catheter. I could pee! Okay, good start. Then he outlined my options. We could add a second medication to the one I was currently taking. It would shrink the prostate, but not for many weeks. It also had some pretty awful potential side effects and it's been linked to agressive prostate cancer though my doctor didn't believe that was necessarily true. The second alternative was a surgical procedure called TURP that would use a laser to evaporate the places where the prostate had become too close to the urethra.
My doctor said he didn't have an opinion on which option was best. I had no medical issue to make it critical to choose the agressive surgical solution. I faced merely quality of life issues...putting up with possible side effects of the medication or the occassional time when I might again require the Dreaded Catheter.
Me? I had to decide? Based on what fountain of knowledge that I posess was I to decide? I didn't want any of those options. I wanted my prostate to be young and small again. At worst I wanted to remain on the single medication and maybe drink less water and hope for the best much harder. I didn't want a new medication with scary side effects. I certainly didn't want surgery and the recovery it entails.
And this, my friends, is pretty much the worst part of aging. Sometimes just you has got to decide when all you want is for some all knowing authority to tell you the right thing, the happy ever after thing, to do.
"The surgery," I said, then instantly regretted it. Maybe I didn't need something so irrevocable. Maybe the new medication wouldn't treat me unkindly. Maybe I should continue as is and wait and see. "The surgery," I concluded.
I went to my office and, later, home, to watch the debate. All was flowing well. I was not drinking very much. Maybe that WAS the key! The urologist had once told me that could be important. Maybe I should hold off on this procedure after all.
The debate came on and it was awful. I hoped I was wrong but, when MSNBC commentator's Rachel Madow's first post debate words were "I don't know who won," I knew who had won. Comments by others, including David Gergen who I really respect, and a CNN Snap Poll all supported the original diagnosis. It was a miserable night.
But at least I could pee.
Until a few hours later when I awoke to find that I couldn't. By 2:30 AM I got to the Emergency Room at Roosevelt Hospital. They took good, quick care of me. Again, as the Dreaded Device went on, great relief! They had me lay there for awhile to make sure nothing else was wrong which there wasn't.
One thing I knew for sure. I'd made the right choice regarding the TURP decision. It will, by the way, happen in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Nice to feel certain. Tough way to achieve that certainty.
Another bad part of aging.
But not my prostate. Oh, it functions alright, as far as I know. But it acts in a really old manner. Like in many men as we age it keeps getting bigger. Big enough to hug my urethra and impinge on the urine flow from the bladder. And sometimes to totally stop it. BAD crisis of aging!
That happened for the first time 5 months ago so I began to take medication. That made it okay till last Monday. Then, sitting in my office, listening to a patient, wondering if it could be really happening again, my hand, holding the pad I use to take notes, began to shake violently. This can't be! But it was. No more pee and the awful growing discomfort that comes with it. As quick as I could, I raced uptown to my urologist.
"Have a seat," said the receptionist, but I couldn't sit down. Fortunately my doctor had me into his office quickly and hooked me up with the dreaded catheter. Immediate relief! When I handed over the $50 copay a bit later he joked: "I wonder how much this would've been worth to you before I fixed you up!"
The plan was to leave the catheter in place till the following Wednesday....9 days...to allow things to cool down and regain function. Then we'd decide what to do next.
Nine days! Nine days of no running, no athletics, no working out. Nine days of walking around EVER so gingerly. Nine days of difficulty sleeping, general discomfort and more than a bit of depression. Yes, these are some of the bad things about aging.
Still, there's another, more important bad thing....
I couldn't see how 9 days could pass, but, of course, they did. One of the things that sustained me through this time was my love of the election and excitement about how well Obama was doing. I plunged into reading the analysis, the polls, the predicitions. I became a BIG fan of the wonderful 538 Blog. And I grew confident that Obama was on the verge of victory.
As important as I think that is for the nation, it paled, of course, to its personal meaning: It cheered me up.
All this, of course, made me keenly aware of the import of the upcoming Presidential Debate. And that was scheduled for Wednesday evening, just hours after my doctor's appointment. Great big day!
The day finally arrived and the doctor removed the catheter. I could pee! Okay, good start. Then he outlined my options. We could add a second medication to the one I was currently taking. It would shrink the prostate, but not for many weeks. It also had some pretty awful potential side effects and it's been linked to agressive prostate cancer though my doctor didn't believe that was necessarily true. The second alternative was a surgical procedure called TURP that would use a laser to evaporate the places where the prostate had become too close to the urethra.
My doctor said he didn't have an opinion on which option was best. I had no medical issue to make it critical to choose the agressive surgical solution. I faced merely quality of life issues...putting up with possible side effects of the medication or the occassional time when I might again require the Dreaded Catheter.
Me? I had to decide? Based on what fountain of knowledge that I posess was I to decide? I didn't want any of those options. I wanted my prostate to be young and small again. At worst I wanted to remain on the single medication and maybe drink less water and hope for the best much harder. I didn't want a new medication with scary side effects. I certainly didn't want surgery and the recovery it entails.
And this, my friends, is pretty much the worst part of aging. Sometimes just you has got to decide when all you want is for some all knowing authority to tell you the right thing, the happy ever after thing, to do.
"The surgery," I said, then instantly regretted it. Maybe I didn't need something so irrevocable. Maybe the new medication wouldn't treat me unkindly. Maybe I should continue as is and wait and see. "The surgery," I concluded.
I went to my office and, later, home, to watch the debate. All was flowing well. I was not drinking very much. Maybe that WAS the key! The urologist had once told me that could be important. Maybe I should hold off on this procedure after all.
The debate came on and it was awful. I hoped I was wrong but, when MSNBC commentator's Rachel Madow's first post debate words were "I don't know who won," I knew who had won. Comments by others, including David Gergen who I really respect, and a CNN Snap Poll all supported the original diagnosis. It was a miserable night.
But at least I could pee.
Until a few hours later when I awoke to find that I couldn't. By 2:30 AM I got to the Emergency Room at Roosevelt Hospital. They took good, quick care of me. Again, as the Dreaded Device went on, great relief! They had me lay there for awhile to make sure nothing else was wrong which there wasn't.
One thing I knew for sure. I'd made the right choice regarding the TURP decision. It will, by the way, happen in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Nice to feel certain. Tough way to achieve that certainty.
Another bad part of aging.
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