14 - A TAMSULOSIN MAN!

DRUG FREE!

I believe in conventional drug treatments. They've benefited me from time to time through my life. They save lives. I probably wouldn't be here today without them. I loathe big pharma and the huge profits made off the back of other's misery but that's not a fight I've chosen to take on.

I know many people for whom prescribed medicines are mistrusted and misunderstood. They don't want them in their body. They don't even believe them to be necessary. Homeopathy is their chosen course of treatment. However the older they get the more I find their course changing as growing infirmity tests their slowly waning good health and strength. You just can't beat hard (pharmaceutical) drugs when the shit really hits the fan!

 I started using prescription drugs for urinary retention on March 22nd 2010. I was 44 years old - too young I thought to be heading in to daily tablet taking, but needs musted. Propranolol is a beta blocker used for reducing high blood pressure in people with heart problems. It works by relaxing the body's blood vessels and so reducing the heart rate. Great drug! The thing is - there is no record online for its efficacy as a treatment for urinary retention. That nevertheless is what my doctor ordered and what I dutifully took twice daily for years. I definitely wasn't going to have a heart attack during that time but I might as well have been eating chalk tablets - aka homeopathics - for my piss problem. 

Neither Propranolol nor any of the drugs prescribed for me by my doctor in the subsequent 10 years helped with my symptoms in any noticeable way. Why? Because they were the wrong drugs. My doctor repeatedly prescribed me the wrong f***ing drugs! I'm still trying to gather the strength to question/ confront him on this. I'm so embarrassed - for him. How could he have got it so wrong for so long?

I was finally prescribed the right medications - Tamsulosin and Dutasteride - 2 years before my TURP surgery. That's 11 years after the first "I'm having trouble peeing ..." consultation with my doctor. That switch only happened because he was on holiday when I attended an appointment and the locum spotted his error. I choose to see this from a glass half full perspective in an otherwise glass very half empty scenario. Family and friends say I need to change my doctor. They say I'm too forgiving, but what's to be gained by causing a scene now?

Though they were the right meds Tamsulosin and Dutasteride did no more than ease the severity of my condition a little - maybe 30%. I think that by the time I made the change my prostate was too large to be significantly affected by them. 

They were no overnight cure for my symptoms. I still suffered from regular and urgent need to pee but the edge was definitely taken off. I found that out when I neglected to take them - when I'd run out or forget to bring them with me on work trips. After a couple of days my pee-pain and the urgency increased noticeably and I desperately regretted not having my 'thirty percenters'.

Most people with BPH seem to be prescribed these meds. There aren't many alternatives. They work well for those in the earlier stages of prostate engargement but not for men like me with an already very enlarged prostate. After growing to 50cc or more you're really beyond effective drug treatment from what I've read. You need surgical intervention of one type or the other - hoLEP/ TURP etc.

My TURP surgery was on July 25th 2023 - 12 weeks ago. It wasn't an overnight cure-all and over the intervening months I've continued to experience significant retention issues - to which has been added daily incontinence (now ended) and what's unpleasantly but aptly called 'leakage'. My surgeon prescribed the drug Vesomni for all of that - a combination of Solifenacin and Tamsulosin. It's a bladder muscle relaxant that's supposed to help the muscles stop tightening - the thing that causes urinary retention. I don't know why I wasn't being prescribed that before my surgery when I had just the same symptoms. 

It has taken a long time for these to reduce, but they have and as of last Friday, not having renewed my prescription for Vesomni I'm drug free! I'm still 'leaking' and still urgently need to pee comically small amounts but that's now at a level I consider tolerable. It's so much better than it was - though might be considered a nightmare to others!

Getting off medication is a big deal for me - a major turning point. 

It only takes a few seconds to pop a pill. Doing so has been a minor daily inconvenience yet after just a couple of days, no longer having to has left me with a powerful sense of liberation that should really only come after being released from under a much heavier burden.

The daily taking of medication forms a part of your life routine - slotted in alongside coffee breaks and tooth brushing. Your psyche adjusts to that. The 'brand' you take defines you especially when those around you don't use your brand or don't use at all. Their ingestion makes them a little part of you; a part of your physical makeup and your identity - how you see yourself in the world. I was a Tamsulosin man for years. Now I've kicked the habit! 

For some time I've seen my medication as an invisible crutch providing hidden support where my broken body hasn't been strong enough to hold itself together on its own. No one sees the crutch, but I'm always mindful that it's there. 

I no longer need that support. I'm standing on my own two feet again and that really is a shagging big deal.

Whilst I expect to be munching pills for all sorts of ailments in later life, for now pill-taking is an unwelcome reminder of the frailty and vulnerability of my body at a time when I should still be feeling healthy and youthful. It may not be long before I need to go on some other lab produced cocktail so I'm going to fully enjoy this moment and this time. 

Last Saturday night, to celebrate this milestone I filled the fridge with 16 cans of beer and sat down to drink ALL of them during the rugby world cup final (All Blacks vs Springboks) Of course that was never going to happen - especially because Ireland ☘️ (my team) weren't on the pitch, but it was an amusing, laddish and satisfying thing to do.

I managed 4 beers. Their unstoppable flow through my renal system resulted in 7 trips to the loo. Thank dog for the 'pause' function on the TV (the one that's still faulty in my bladder) and the nearby under-stairs toilet closet I constructed a couple of years ago for just this sort of occasion! I have a very long way to go before I'll be able to match my peers in their drinking prowess, but on the plus side I'm a very cheap date!!