My name is JD. I have been on Skool for almost two weeks now. I am married to my wife Dawn for 32 years. I am 54 years old. If you would have asked me about BPH or my prostate before April, I would have told you I am fine. The truth is for roughly 10 years, I’ve been having a flow issue. I felt my annual physical with my doctor and follow ups with him throughout the year were treating my issues well and eventually they would resolve themselves. I didn’t have pain unless I forgot to take my Flowmax that day. The pain wasn’t severe, it was just more uncomfortable to urinate. In February/March I finally had pain. Not enough to go see a doctor though. I was at church volunteering. It was painful enough that I left before the service started. I went home and slept the remainder of the day. My wife encouraged me to see a doctor. She thought I had a urinary tract infection. Reluctantly the next I decided to go to urgent care. Because the doctors office was closed by the time I arrived, I ended up scheduling with Minute Clinic for the next morning and bought an over the counter UTI test. This started me down a path of test after test after test. No UTI was discovered. I followed up with a gastrointestinal doctor who scheduled a CT scan. That doctor recommended I seek treatment at a urologist due to something showing on the scan with my left kidney. By this appointment time, late March or early April, the pain that started this whole journey was gone. Still nothing regarding my prostate was on my radar. I thought kidney infection or kidney stone but that was it. When I finally got into see the urologist on April 16th, my whole life changed. In July, I had Aquablation surgery on my prostate. It was tremendously successful. I am 100% better now. I am open to questions. There are more details that I can share later. I’ll try to break it down into smaller posts. I apologize for the length of this one!

@Alex Beviss I really don’t know what caused the pain. It was in my lower left abdomen. I imagine since the CT scan showed my left kidney was 100% blocked, it had something to do with that. The first CT was ordered by the gastrointestinal doctor. I drank a liquid. The results of that scan is what sped up the urgency to see a urologist. The second CT was where they told me they couldn’t penetrate the kidney. They used IV dye. Two attempts failed. I already had the catheter by the second scan. The pain only lasted a couple of days. The minute clinic doctor put me on antibiotics. But then took me off of them after three days since they were precautionary for a UTI. That could be the reason the pain went away too. Not sure.

I’d do a prostate screening at the Pub. Pub, Pints, and Your Prostate Thailand is pretty far away however one of my coworkers is planning on retiring there in the next couple of years. I’m told he’s buying a two bedroom so I can bring my wife for a vacation.

Not knowing my dad has always been an obstacle for knowing his family history. My mom’s side of the family was silent until recently. My grandpa died of pneumonia at 95. Antibiotics were ineffective on him at some point because he’d had it too often. Still, he lived a long time. All I ever heard talk about were his hemorrhoids. Maybe I need to join a Skool community about those topics next. 😂

I think there is as much silence on this side too. Especially in my family. I didn’t get to know my biological grandmother on my mother side. She died in 1969 before I was born. She died of some sort of cancer, but my family has always been quiet about what it was. I don’t think her children really knew what she died of. She died far away from the family because they sent her away for treatment. Her son, my Uncle died two years ago from cancer and his jaw. My Aunt, her daughter is a breast cancer survivor. I don’t know my father, so I’m not privy to his medical history, unfortunately. Silence is deadly. We needed to use our voices everywhere to bring awareness.

I’m probably closer ti the person who ignored it. Not that I wasn’t aware, but I thought talking about my problems at my annual physical with my primary care doctor was enough. He had me on a plan for treatment. I thought the flowmax was going to solve everything. I wasn’t concerned because, I didn’t have intolerable pain. If I didn’t take the medication, I could see a difference so I made sure I took it daily. I had a bad experience with a urologist about 10 years ago. I knew then I wasn’t healthy. He explored my prostate, told me it was fine and gave me a check list of things to stop doing. One of the things on the list was stop drinking coffee. I think I threw the list in the trash on my way out of the office. I started self treating by taking Saw Palmetto. It didn’t really help so eventually I stopped taking it. When I went in April to a new Urologist, and he told me my CT scan showed what might be a tumor in my bladder, I was shocked to say the least. A cystoscopy in the office that morning proved no tumor but revealed a grossly enlarged prostate that need a stint at the minimum so exploratory surgery was scheduled. I had 750ml of urine in my bladder when the doctor examined me. They fit me with a catheter and sent me home. Two more surgeries, the first in May and the second in July brought me healing and no tumor anywhere in my body. I would have been a lifelong catheter user if I had kept my head in the sand! Thank God I listened finally.