Prostate Cancer

After the Brachytherapy, although at no time did I suffer any embarrassment I felt that the opportunity to be embarrassed was there. So this, you know I phoned the doctor up because extremely uncomfortable and very painful and I've since seen the doctor and this is one of the side effects that certain people experience. I experienced this pain in the bladder and trouble passing water and passing water far too often to get involved in doing anything else and this obviously leads to a lack of confidence and you don't feel like leaving home. But this has improved dramatically over the last week and it's nearly, I wouldn't say it's nearly back to normal that's probably right but it's on it's way and this is one of the symptoms that you may get. And the doctors aren't worried so far be it for me to be worried because I don't have their experience and I'm sure they're right. And my confidence is gradually returning and I can go out of the house and travel about now and it's getting back to normal.
 

Temporary incontinence due to male cystitis in my case necessitated pads available from the District Nurse for one week & my operation having taken place in September '99 I still had a few urinary symptoms eight months after the operation, that is very urgent frequency together with a very occasional accident and nocturia once or twice at night. I sought further advice from my urologist who prescribed Detrusitol [tolterodine] this gave me the ability to control the frequency which had begun to interfere with travel by train.
 

The two principal side effects were firstly, incontinence I had to wear incontinence pads, I was wearing quite large pads, and getting through a couple a day, two or three a day to begin with,  things improved over the course of the first six months I suppose, I was doing pelvic floor exercise, perhaps not as consistently as I might have done but they helped, but then it’s, it reached a plateau, I was, after that point I was going back to the hospital every six months, for a check up which consisted of a PSA test and a chat about my condition generally, and after the first two or three perhaps of those assessments I had... the guy I saw had been trained and was operating on male slings which reduce incontinence and he thought that I was an ideal candidate for that, so I had a test for that, which was basically to see the capacity of my bladder and the amount of leakage, and they decided that because I wasn’t too severely incontinent that I was a good candidate for that so I was put forward for that second operation, which took place just about two years after my prostatectomy. I had the operation under, I had the choice of local anaesthetic or a general anaesthetic, and I chose a local because I don’t like anaesthetics very much, the operation was quite straightforward, quite quick, I went home the following day. It was incredibly uncomfortable, the operation is basically you’re, you’re cut open, right underneath, right underneath the bit you sit on, which made it very difficult, when I got home, very difficult to get comfortable, difficult at night, difficult when you are sitting down, and difficult walking, the first couple of weeks were pretty uncomfortable, it was, I would say it was, that the operation was worth doing because the incontinence was reduced, but I had rather hoped that I’d be completely free and in control of, that aspect and free of having to wear pads, but it wasn’t, things were a lot better, I wear one smaller pad now, and I don’t have to worry so much about it, I don’t have to worry about making sure that I’m within reach of a loo so I can change my pad when I go out in the evening or anything like that, so from that point of view it’s been very beneficial, not as good as I would have hoped.