At age 60, I had problems peeing effectively. Thought it was my weight and dropped 75 pounds, which certainly made everything better. But not the peeing problem.
The doc checked my prostate: “It’s big.” He prescribed Tamsulosin (Flomax), but that caused my blood pressure to crash and put me in the ER. A blood test showed a PSA of 7.5, and I was referred to a urologist.
The urologist put me on antibiotics to rule out an infection, which didn’t help, and then we did a prostate biopsy. Cancer with a Gleeson Score of 4+3, which is too aggressive for age 60 according to the doc.
So, three weeks later I had a radical prostatectomy using robotic laparoscopy. 5 hours of surgery because of some bleeding problems. Pathology was good and the margins were clear.
After three months, everything worked as it is supposed to. I was fortunate in that regard.
PSA has been undetectable since then (5 years) using the ultra-sensitive test, until a couple of months ago when it came back at 0.016. That’s pretty low, but higher than the 0.014 it was two years ago. Going back in May for more testing.
But post-prostatectomy peeing sure is an improvement, at least after the recovery period.
Rick “sigh” Denney
