Well fellows your PSA levels as indicated by your blood test are above the normal level and a follow up appointment has been booked with a urologist. What to expect?
- Will Your Dignity Be Preserved?
As you check in with reception at your urologist hopefully you can have a long hallway to pace up and down before you meet the firing squad. Pacing may relieve your stress perhaps more effectively than a double martini or a benzo.
- Do They Understand Your Anxiety?
Assuming you are not a GI Joe you really aren’t looking forward to this…hopefully. Do those medicos make you strip and put on a hospital gown to rub your vulnerability up where they are going to lube and give you a digital rectal examination? Nakedness is your humiliation and their power.
- We Have Seen This Before So Don’t Fret!
Yes they may have seen butts and other assorted male organs hundreds of times before so don’t sweat it they say. But you the patient derive no comfort from this. You haven’t been a vulnerable specimen a hundred times. Cruel and uncompassionate words.
- Welcome to the Rectum Clockwork Orange Violence
DRE pros. Have a PSAsutra favourite position? Sideway hugging the knees or doggie style? It isn’t that bad. It is the anticipation that shreds the mind. Best to at least take off your shoes for the squat!
- What Follows?
Pee in the bucket to measure urine retention. Easy Peesy! Bladder ultrasound.
- Meet and Greet or Flee Before The Meet?
No problem? Most likely not. Prostate cancer is no joke so you will be asked a hundred questions and then if you are not toast you find out your risks for developing prostate cancer. Fortunate ones may be told your enlarged prostate needs to be shrunk so big Pharma to the rescue with 50 mgs of Mirabegron. No caffeine please they may say. Move to a monastery is best.
- Suck it Up Dude!
I blame myself for being cautious. I asked for a PSA a rather denigrated test as being unreliable but after peeing up a storm on a flight back from Lisbon I put up the white flag and surrendered and started this whole process. I am trying to give you a lighthearted view of the urologist visit to cheer you up and encourage you to have the PSA so as you ferociously pace the hallways you can think of me as your sacrificial animal.
Update: The Albanian Association of Urologists have issued an arrest warrant for the author of this article claiming an affront to their organization. Security details have been assigned to prevent his kidnapping to Tirana.
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