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ACUTE URINE RETENTION. BHP.
July 7, 2009 |
ACUTE URINE RETENTION
In this busy, busy world of ours, many men are working so hard and going so fast that they don’t take time for regular physical checkups. Some never think about prostate problems until it’s almost too late.
Again the symptoms of BPH can slip up on a busy man. He simply figures that by sixty-three he should be urinating more often and he’s heard other men talk about needing to get up at night once or twice. He thinks nothing of it.
Then one day he needs to urinate but can’t. He stands there waiting and then straining but he can’t pass even a few drops and he’s hurting like crazy. Soon the pain is so agonizing that he calls his doctor or rushes down to a hospital emergency room to find out what’s the matter.
A catheter drains the urine from the distended bladder and relieves the problem. Some patients with acute urine retention might be holding as much as a quart of urine. Most patients will look much better within minutes and feel fine in an hour or so.
A sudden attack of acute urine retention can happen to almost any man who has some obstruction already in his urethra. There are also conditions that can bring on such attacks.
Prolonged exposure to the cold, especially if you are not used to it can sometimes bring on such an attack. Drinking alcohol by someone not used to it. The sudden use of antihistamines is also a culprit in this case.
Such an attack is usually enough for the patient to have his prostate checked critically by an urologist who will advise him if any treatment or surgery is needed — as well as suggestions about how to prevent such an attack in the future.
So, there is your primer on BPH, its symptoms and some details about the problems it brings up. Now, is there a way to live with these problems during that time when the doctor recommends no major treatment is needed. We’ll look at that in the next chapter.