The Glass Isn't Always Half Empty

2 minute read time.

I posted 5 days ago following a gross hematuria about 10 days previously.

I presented my first gross hematuria in late January. For those of you that have been through the experience, it can be absolutely shocking! I'm still not sure what came first, the total surprise at looking down into a lavatory bowl and sighting and grossly exaggerating the view of the volume of blood 'filling it', or the immediate realisation that I could have a major health problem. For a chap like me, the glass is always half empty, rather than half full.    

I visited a the A&E Department of a small hospital somewhere on the Lincolnshire coastline and was given a prescription for antibiotics, even though at no time had I suggested or presented the symptoms of a UTI.

 

Following a radical prostatectomy in 2012, more and more I had been experiencing discomfort and irritation both at the the commencement of a void and or voiding. I say voiding with tongue in cheek, at no time did I really feel that my bladder was empty. Sometimes I would visit the bathroom two or three times a night. It therefore follows that after my latest gross hematuria I was determined to have a candid discussion with my GP. He was superb. I managed to get into see him immediately. It was a late Friday afternoon and I explained the history of the event from start to finish. I suggest that the gross hematuria had been caused by a 10k jog around the lakes in Milton Keynes. He looked at me with one of those expressions that only a very experienced GP demonstrates and immediately handed me two containers for a urine test. As we talked he went into his system and placed me on the 'Two Week Wait Programme' reserved for patients displaying cancer symptoms. The urine test result was not one I wanted to hear. No sign of an infection but it did contain blood. I was convinced that I had bladder cancer.

Within two days Milton Keynes University Hospital telephoned and asked me to come in for an ultrasound. The results were not abnormal. Last Friday I went in for a cystoscopy. I lay on the table staring at the overhead screen as the as the tube was being routed through my urethra. While the procedure is painless my anxiety was nevertheless very high. At any moment I was expecting to see a 'sea of coral' gently swaying in the fluids contained within my bladder. My heart started racing as I spotted a 'growth' just as the tube entered my bladder from the urethra. We will come back to that in a second said the Oncologist, pre-empting me before I could utter a sound. The bladder looked magnificent, clear, clean and lined with brightly illuminated blood vessels. Not a coral reef to be see anywhere!

Prior to exit the oncologist paused once again at the so called growth and announced: 'This is the cause of the problem, a stone has formed over some of the scar tissue subsequent to  reattachment of your urethra to the bladder following your radical prostatectomy’. Apparently this is not at all unusual following a prostatectomy.

Surgery has been scheduled to remove the prostrate stone (prostatic calculi) after which I should be right as rain.

The moral of this story is: Always adopt the view that the glass is half full, rather than half empty. Let the experts tell you if it needs topping up.

Anonymous