OK, again with the warning. DON'T read this if you are easily offended. I am going to discuss medical issues here, in the hope that any friends I have who are men my age, or women who LOVE men my age, will learn something. This information might save you life. But if might also offend you if you can't take frank talk about medical issues and body parts. And blood. And Urine. And the word Penis.
So this is your last chance. If you don't want to read this stuff, I understand. I'm not offended. Please, feel free to tune out. But I'm about to get graphic here. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
I'm only going to mention this in passing, because it's not really important except to explain that I was a miserable bastard when Wednesday morning rolled around. I had an outbreak of gout in my right foot on Tuesday, and could hardly walk by Wednesday morning. I had to be brought into same day surgery in a wheel chair. That being said. I got there about ten o'clock in the morning.
The nurse was great, even checked and found out she could give me pain meds for the gout, put my foot up in the bed and made me comfortable to await my surgery.
Of course, they were running behind, so I had to sit there for hours.
When I finally did get to go upstairs to the operating room, I had been told what to expect. They would use a scope to go into my bladder through my penis and take out any tumors they found. I would be under full anesthesia, out cold. And on top to that, the anesthesiologist said he would shoot me full of some super, "Advil" like drug that would deal with the gout. Yee ha!
I don't remember going out. But I will never forget waking up in the recovery room.
"OUCH! I HAVE TO PEE SO BAD! GET ME TO THE BATHROOM!" Nope, I don't. It's the catheter inside me. I couldn't pee if I WANTED to. And believe me, I WANTED TO! I have never felt a pain like this in my life.
Shortly, this comes out and I'm on my way to getting out of the hospital. But, I have to prove to them I CAN pee. OK, been waiting for this, steer me to the bathroom. Nothing but blood coming out of me. That counts, so they send me home. But they didn't warn me about some stuff, so I will warn YOU!
Just because blood, and I'm assuming some urine, slowly comes out of you while you are still under the influence of drugs, in the hospital, does NOT mean that it will be this way when you get home. As a matter of fact, I'm here to tell you, that it does nothing but lull you into a false sense of control. You BELIEVE that when you get home, you will be able to point your penis toward the toilet, and pee into it.
And you will be wrong.
Because when the pee finally escapes from your penis, you will have NO control over where it goes! It is like shooting a sawed off shotgun into your bathroom in the general direction of your toilet. Keep in mind, that the pee coming out of you is backed up by all the gas they pumped into your bladder to keep it inflated so they could look at what they are doing while they are in there. Your piss now has, "a muzzle velocity".
By the time I was through relieving myself, my bathroom looked like a scene from, "CSI: Miami". There was, "blood splatter" from floor to ceiling. I think there was even blood on the shower curtain BEHIND me! I have no idea how.
I decided that I would, sit to pee for the next day or two. Doesn't help. You can't really get it all out that way, and it still has a muzzle velocity, so it shoots out of the toilet and all over the room through the crack between the toilet seat and the commode. Like machine gun spray from a German pill box. It covers the whole bathroom at knee level.
After going through a whole roll of paper towels and a bottle of 409, I told my wife I would just be peeing in the back yard for the next few days. After all, I have a six foot fence and no neighbors with second story windows. So, as they teach in the Police Academy, I have a, "reasonable expectation of privacy in my curtiliage". Meaning that no one could legally use a periscope or ladder to look over the fence and accuse me of indecent exposure. And I wouldn't have to mess up the bathroom. This would suck in the winter, but this time of year? Not so much.
And even when you are not peeing? You're bleeding. Yeah, guys, you will have to borrow a, "pad" from your wife or daughter and stick it inside you underwear, or you are going to leave a mark on your couch.
Cancer is not for the weak.
The day after? Not much better. Because now, you've been on pain medicine for a few days, and you're so constipated you can't stand it. And the general anesthesia is starting to raise through your body and settle in your big muscles around your abdomen. So when you laugh at something funny on TV? It hurts like someone punched you in the ribs.
You think I'm kidding because you've never experienced this? Ask the woman in you life how it feels the day after she's had a pelvic and that gas starts to move up. She'll clue you in.
By Thursday night, I couldn't wait to go to bed. I took a sleeping pill and was in bed by 10:30.
Friday morning, I was awakened by a call from my doctor. Yep, it's cancer. The worst kind of the best kind. It's not in the bladder wall (good) but it's pretty bad (bad). But, they think they got it all (good), yet just to be sure, they want me to go through all this again in a month so they can put in more chemotherapy at the spots they took the FOUR tumors out of (bad).
He originally thought I had TWO tumors. I guess I should be glad he FOUND all of them.
The best part about it, is that after the treatment next month, I don't have to go back for a year, and he thinks that we caught this in time and I'll be fine (good).
I think I told you that the leading causes of this kind of cancer are smoking and exposure to chemicals at work? Well, I smoked for 25 years (even though I quit in 2002) and spent most of the 90's standing in meth labs, so I meet all the above qualifications. That being said. I still smoke two cigars a week. One on Friday afternoon, and one on Sunday afternoon.
My wife told my best friend I had to give up cigars because of this, so he shows up today without a cigar for, "Dog Day Friday". WTF? All things considered? I don't think my two cigars a week are the problem here.
So, guys if you wake up and piss blood? And your job does NOT involve getting punched in the kidneys all the time, see a doctor. The treatment sucks ass. It's the worst thing you will ever have to deal with.
Right up until you die an awful, slow, death from bladder cancer. Get it?
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