Prostate Problems: One Man’S Journey Through Bph

By Tony Bianco

When Tony begins having trouble urinating in his late-40s, he has no idea why, and even less inkling that hes about to become an unwilling combatant in an internal battle that will last over a decade and significantly change his life physically, psychologically, sexually, and emotionally. Firmly-held beliefs and a longstanding way of living are gradually challenged, frequently dislodged, occasionally obliterated, and ultimately transformed by Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), which afflicts half of all men over 50. Tony becomes increasingly obsessed with his condition as it worsens, processing voluminous info about it, changing his perspective on aging, playing amateur doctor on himself with sporadic success, and using his body as an unscientific experimental lab in a constant search for answers that takes his Californian approach to life through Eastern philosophy and western medicine, natural remedies and alternative medicine, and whatever else is reputed to work. Tonys uneven, humorous, and sometimes contentious relationship with Dr. Tatum, which fluctuates with the pendulous swings and sudden misdirections of the condition, features the interplay of an expert in urology with no personal experience and a patient who has more personal experience than he ever wanted.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475958065

Tony Bianco

Tony Bianco was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and grew up in Binghamton, New York. He attended Villanova University and City College of San Francisco for one year each. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and extended family, nine people over four generations under one roof.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Everything You Didn’t Want

To Know About Piss

BPH: Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (or Hypertrophy)—benign if you don’t have it. Benign here doesn’t mean kind or mild, because it’s neither of those, but non-malignant, not cancerous. It could always be worse. This is a mantra you chant to yourself to provide comfort. It could always be worse, but this is enough for me, especially when layered onto my intermittent back pain, which occasionally veers into agony. Prostatic means relating to the prostate, the walnut-sized gland at the neck of the bladder surrounding the urethra in male mammals, a category, unfortunately in this case, I fall into. Female primates once had prostates but managed to get rid of them. How? There’s a reason to learn how to communicate with those hairy gals. Hyperplasia means an overgrowth of cells in a tissue, and hypertrophy means an abnormal increase in the size of a body part. Now, of all the body parts to enlarge, especially in that region. All guys want a long penis, but if you have BPH you don’t, because your urine has farther to travel to escape and can get stuck in there, believe me. Here’s the part that gets me: It’s not really known why the prostate enlarges as men age. It has to do with hormonal changes and I’m sure many women feel this is only fair. The fact that it’s purely a male problem doesn’t make me feel any more masculine. If Freud had factored BPH into the formulation of his psychosexual development theory he would have never devised the concept of penis envy.

My urologist, Dr. Tatum, says my prostate is only slightly enlarged. Slightly? This is hard to believe, but he’s extremely knowledgeable, can quote from memory key details of myriad BPH studies, and earns part of his living goosing men like me to determine the size of that weighty walnut. What if it were largely enlarged? I’d bring it up on charges of strangling my poor little urethra, that mismatched urine conduit. There’s much beauty in nature, even certain perfections, but this design is not one of them. To deal with this condition you need either a good doctor or a good plumber.

Here’s the rub: I no longer need my prostate’s services. According to the August 2004 Mayo Clinic Health Letter, The prostate secretes fluids that help nourish and transport sperm. Now 60, I had a vasectomy in 1983 after my wife and I decided that two (daughters) is great company but three might crowd our finances and ability to furnish a proper upbringing. So now it sits there like an appendix, unneeded, but much more unwanted. The word prostate derives from the Greek prostates, meaning one who stands before, to which I might add a urinal. Where I stand more than an hour a day. That’s a lot of time for a busy man. That’s a lot of time for a retired man. It’s maddeningly frustrating but you have to accept it and go with the flow, if you’re lucky enough to get one. Urinating takes coordination of the central, autonomic, and somatic nervous systems. Apparently it’s difficult for me to get these three to work together. Hard to believe, but I once spent an hour on one piss. And this from a guy who used to complain that his wife took too long in the bathroom. It was coming out in short spurts generated by sphincteral flexes and abdominal pushes. My abdomen has become so strong that it could stop the thrust of a Samurai’s sword, blunting the tip.

CHAPTER 2

Loerarchy

Spurts sound frustrating but they actually rank highly in the realm of BPH effluence, which, low to high, make that no to high, goes like this: 1) Nothing—stuck and locked up like a serial killer in a supermax 2) Drops and droplets—maddening but better than

nothing 3) Dribbling—dribs and drabs and, believe me, you’ll take it 4) Spurts—a mini-stream that splashes into the toilet with a sound you hear as mellifluous music 5) Stream—a rare occurrence usually experienced only in the first piss after orgasm, which it exceeds in bliss.

When I’m going out somewhere inhospitable to the demands of difficult urination, misterbation, the long-time married man’s version of masterbation, the young unmarried man’s version of masturbation, can buy you up to five hours of urinary freedom if you’re patient enough to spend almost a half hour urinating afterward. Get the feeling it’s a time-consuming condition? This is as close as you’ll get to the Yellow River, Mr. Yangtze.

Often in works of art the old man experiences flashes of youth by falling in love with a younger woman or beating younger men in business or sports, but for me those flashes are in those precious yellow streams. Ah, the freshness of a freshet. Life is not a work of art, it’s too messy and disjointed with all those mixed-up feelings, uncertainties, contradictory impulses, ambivalences, short-circuited thoughts, and you have to live through all those lonely and useless minutes by yourself.

CHAPTER 3

Making a Stand

I’m not saying I belong in the Guinness Book of Records, but no one has ever outstood me at a public urinal, no one and nobody. I know it’s twisted to judge other men’s urinary performances against my own, but since you’re standing there so long you can’t help but notice. No, it’s twisted. It’s a Pyrrhic victory, though, because you feel as if no one else has it, or at least as badly as you do. Since half of all men over 50 have BPH, you’d think some old bugger would outlast me. Someone, say, in his 70s, or surely in his 80s with a fully mature prostate, since prostates continue to grow from ages 40 to 80 though there’s no good reason to do so. OK, Saul Bellow fathered a child at 84, but he’d won the National Book Award, a Pulitzer, and the Nobel Prize by then. Maybe I just have more patience than most men. Or desperation.

My propensity for standing serves me well enduring this condition. It’s just a condition, not a disease (it could always be worse). I usually avoid the social convention of sitting when visiting, unless I’m eating, and even then I sometimes manage to stand or get up early from the table. They made a movie about a Yogi who stood for 21 years, but I’m not that bad. Because I’m 6'3" I think people try to cut me down to size, bring me down to their level, but I’m not stooping. Intermittent hemorrhoids reinforce this propensity. You get a lot of reading done while trying to go, which is a plus because I’m a slow reader and would like to read all the interesting works ever written, though there’s a sense I might not. BPH is a test of patience and belief: It’ll start flowing any second now . . . any minute now . . . any . . . in there? You tell yourself lies until you believe them, and worse, believe in them, because you have to. Lennon thought he knew about mind games? In public restrooms I can go into meditatively relaxed states with my eyes closed. Relaxation is a divine attribute we the afflicted aspire to, its having been preached to us as an aid in transcending our lot. I would never have thought I could cultivate such calm and patience in reaching urinary nirvana, defined as more than five ounces. Well, they do call them restrooms. On a much more mundane level, a well-timed fart can lead to a brief improvement in flow. At Gare du Nord in Paris I was surprised to see men and women using the same restrooms, and paying to do so.

CHAPTER 4

The Key and The V

At many stores and businesses, rec centers, my dentist’s office, especially in big cities, you need The Key to pee. It’s a weird concept to be locked out of a place we all need to use, but urban reality forces organizations to set up a loose screening process to keep out druggies and other undesirables. Even weirder is that although I’ve passed muster and been granted The Key, ofttimes I’m no better off than the locked-out undesirables because I can’t really go. I have The Key but not the key to pee. You’d rather go into a toilet than a urinal because you get the auditory feedback and reward of water hitting water, and visual feedback of seeing (if) the toilet water turn(s) yellow, a slight tinge pleasing you and justifying the flush for my environmental consciousness.

I’m hell on one-holes. You go to a nice restaurant with good food, well thought-out design, lighting and ambience, which seats about 150 people, and there’s one toilet in the men’s room. One. There are a couple guys waiting when I go in and seven when I