Mild Discomfort

After three weeks of waiting, I finally got to see the urologist this last Thursday.  In addition to feeling, during those three weeks of waiting, wiped out by the cigarette cessation project, I felt strange and weird sensations in what is called the pelvic floor, the location of a number of vital body parts having to do with sexual reproduction and waste disposal.  I was experiencing down there in that primordial nether world what I called “discomfort” that ranged from mild, to moderate, to significant. 

Significant was the worst because I didn’t know what the significance was—aside from having to urinate a bit more frequently that usual; had my prostate enlarged?  If so, that might account for the difference in urination.  Or worse, did I have prostate cancer?  The discomfort had been with me a couple of months, relatively mildly, before I went to the doctor.  I finally felt I simply had to go to the doctor what with all the older guys at the club where I work out constantly talking in hushed voices about their experiences with prostate cancer—with procedures that led sometimes to complete sexual dysfunction and much worse actually incontinence…. So I was pretty much a mess those three weeks waiting to see the urologist and a miserable mess the week before thinking about prostate cancer….

So last Thursday was a long day.  First I went to get my teeth cleaned.  I had forgotten I had a cleaning appointment.  My hygienist was somewhat disappointed in my gums; they had infected pockets she said and too much tartar.  She went to work and ground the hell out of my gums for an hour.

Then I went to where the urologist was.  He was a short guy with salt and paper hair sort of moussed straight up and he had a soul patch too, and a really big index finger as I was soon to find out.  First, my PSA (the blood text for prostate cancer) was really normal and my urine he said was “crystal clear.”  But the guy had, as it were, to see for himself, and having requested that I bend over he stuck his finger about as far as he could “up there” till I felt almost that he was going to push it right out the front.  I mean the guy gave the old prostate a pretty complete work out as far as I am concerned.

Now from where I was standing all bent over I couldn’t see the guy’s face when he removed his finger from where he had stuck it, but Carol who was present said the guy had a look of relieved excitement.  And while I couldn’t see his face—as still bent over I wiped stuff from that area—I heard him say. “Normal. Completely normal. That’s a healthy prostate.  And it’s not even enlarged.”

Then he had me go pee in a plastic bottle.  “Empty, completely,” he said.  So I did and when I went back in the little room, a nurse person made me lie down and ran some machine over my abdomen that indicated I had indeed emptied my bladder.  Honestly I don’t know what that was about.

The doctor returned, again saying, healthy prostate and no signs either of bladder cancer.  My urine was “crystal clear” he said again. I can only assume urologists have other standards for “crystal clarity” than those of your normal lay person since it seemed pretty damn yellow to me.

36 days without a cigarette……

One Reply to “Mild Discomfort”

  1. OK. Here’s what I want to know. In the documentary Margaret Cho: Assassin, a film that documents a performance of Margaret Cho, a solo stand-up comedian, Cho maintains that what straight men really want from their female partners is a woman who will put on a strap-on and, then, penetrate them anally. Cho cautions that women should be aware that straight men like this sexual practice so much that, short of a restraining order, a woman will never be able to break off the relationship with the man she has done this with. Apparently she speaks from experience. Her message: Be sure he’s a keeper, ladies.
    How is it that I never knew this? I’m not a kid.
    And furthermore, is this a generational preference?

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