This is about an in-office medical procedure. The TMI part is after the first post, so it won’t leap out in the mouse-over.
So let’s see it. 
Sounds like a song title:
Hemmorhage (In My Hands), and then
Lasers (In My Prostate)
You’ve got a laser in your prostate? Too cool!
We can put lasers in prostates, but we can’t fit them onto sharks? What is the world coming to?
I’m 56, and I had enlarged benign prostate symptoms for several years. I woke up to pee every 90 minutes in the night. All travel was broken up by desperately needed restroom stops. The passage through the prostate was constricted, so I never could empty my bladder completely. I’d walk out of the restroom with my bladder 1/3 full.
My urologist put me on Flomax. My regular doctor added Avodart to that. The side effects were strange. I could get an erection and orgasm, but no ejaculation. My head hair began to edge back to my original hairline, but my chest hair fell out.
Every year, my urologist had me do a test. I’d go into the office with a full bladder, then I’d pee into a funnel over a beaker that sat on a digital scale. The scale was wired to a printer that measured how much I peed and how fast. Then I’d lay back while his lovely nurse did an ultrasound measurement of the urine remaining in my bladder.
In the last test before the procedure, there was nearly as much left inside as I was able to force out. So, they scheduled me for the laser procedure. I’ll put that in my next post.
[quavering John Denver imitation] Lasers…in my Prostate…make me happy…
Lasers…in my eyes…can make me cry-y-y…ai-yi…[/qJDi]
For a week before, he put me on antibiotics and switched my anti-inflammatory to one that tended toward less bleeding. On the day, he gave me Valium and something I can’t recall.
I laid on my side on the table with my legs bent as if I were sitting, and my butt toward the doc. The first part was numbing my prostate. He slid a narrow probe into my anus until it was up against the prostate. Then a syringe of novocaine or something like that through the probe into the prostate.
Then he had me turn over. After a few minutes of conversation while the numbness came on, he slid a surgical probe into my urethra (pee tube.) It had a micro-camera and a tiny steel thing with a laser piped into it. On a little television, I watched this thing slide into my penis. Then he got to the prostate and poked the sharp steel thing into the meat of the prostate. He hit the laser button, and I felt some heat. I stopped watching the television, but he repeated that sequence of poking and lasing three more times. Two on the left, two on the right.
Then he had me get dressed and go to an upper floor of the hospital. The nurses there said if could pee, I could go home without a catheter. I could not, so I was peeing into a bag for a week.
Next, I’ll tell you how well it worked. Bear with me, I think faster than I can type.
I was a bit tender for a few days after the catheter was removed. I had stopped taking the Flomax and Avodart the day of the procedure, but the act of urination was continually getting better.
After a few months, I did another pee-in-a-funnel test, and the numbers were much better. A year after that, another test was dramatically better than that. I peed 900 ml into the beaker, with a rapid flow. The doctor said I had the biggest bladder in town; I had set a record. The ultrasound detected only 60 ml remaining in my bladder.
You let them stick a needle up your ass? Wow. You are a manly man! (Granted, I do not own a prostate, but if I did, I’d be demanding the Good Drugs before a procedure like that!) The rest of it wouldn’t bother me as much, but a local up THERE…no way, uh-uh.
Keep getting better, though!
Geez, up until now, I thought the aliens were bad.
We need to kidnap some aliens and put them through laser prostrate surgery. Betcha they’ll leave our butts alone then!
P.S. Seriously, I’m really glad it worked out well for you, AskNott.
Waitaminnit, you’re focusing on the anus?!
THEY STUCK A PROBE UP HIS PENIS. Oy gevalt.
Well, I did have some Valium. I was awake and aware, but I didn’t much care about anything. The first thing in was more-or-less a narrow medical dildo, and the needle went in through that.
When I was a kid of maybe ten, I had a panic attack in a dentist’s office. He must have decided I was old enough to see his horrific, old-fashioned syringe. Ever since then, my policy has been, "You can jab me if necessary, but don’t show me the damned needle." I knew what was going to happen, but I refused to watch.
The whole procedure sounded kinda scary, as the doctor explained it beforehand, but I considered the alternative, and I’ll ask you. Does it hurt when you pee, most times? For years? Yes, I let him put a needle up my ass. Yes.
I think it’s amazing that they can do procedures like this, with tiny cameras, lasers, and things, instead of having to slice people open.
Glad you’re back to normal, AskNott.
Ahem.
May I ask how the other rehab went? Are you able to perform sexually?
(Yikes, that’s very personal. Feel free to tell me to mind my own business.)
Before this laser procedure (Og bless General Electric, peace be upon them,) the standard procedure was much more horrific. Trans-urethral Resection Procedure, also called the Roto-Rooter surgery, was a thing where they’d run a fierce bladey thing through the tube into the prostate and ream it out to a bigger size. :eek: A newer advance is called Needle Ablation, and a high-speed rotating needle does the work instead. :eek:
In the laser procedure, it cooks a section of tissue on each side of the urethra, and over a period of months, that tissue shrinks and the passage gets bigger.
You watched it on screen? :eek:
Oh, that. Yes, there is erection, ejaculation, and no loss of sensation (unlike some other prostate surgeries.) My chest hair came back, too.
Avodart patients are not able to give blood until 6 months after stopping the drug, but I’m back into the blood-bank rotation. 
Oh, good.
I watched right up to the time when the sharp pointy laser thingy pierced the urethra wall. Then I looked away, and I didn’t see the rest of it.