If life gets dull, I’ll know I’m dead!
For those people who are squeamish about medical procedures, stop reading this and find something else to read.
For those who for some reason are offended by references to sexual areas of the body, stop reading now and go on to something else. This will be TMI for you.
I have been diagnosed with a very rare condition. My urologist has never seen a case like this. She is consulting with doctors and surgeons to find the appropriate therapy for this condition. I’m awaiting their decision.
It started with a routine post TURP (Trans Urethral Resection of the Prostate) follow up visit to my urologist. I was showing no symptoms serious enough to mention, but of course I had to provide a urine specimen as I came into the office.
After several minutes she came into the room where I sat, and said she found something that worried her - crystals in my urine specimen. She said that might be from kidney stones, so she gave me a medical order to go over to the hospital for a CT scan of my abdomen.
She also recommended that I include more acidic foods to prevent the crystals formation. I went to the store and bought some fresh pineapple and overdosed that night. Worst acid stomach I’ve ever experienced!
A couple of days later she called and scheduled me back for the results of the CT scan. She put me on the table and did a sonogram of my pubic region. Then she went to her office and was gone for nearly an hour. I thought she had forgotten me and went to the door of the exam room and looked down the hall. A nurse immediately told me she would be in to see me soon, but she was busy studying my scans.
When she came in she brought her laptop computer with the CT scan on it. She had me come over to the counter and watch as she ran a series of pictures showing horizontal planes from the top of the bladder down to the bottom of the prostate. I asked about the kidney stones, and she quickly reassured me I don’t have any.
The prostate is still enlarged, but thanks to the TURP surgery, it has been hollowed out to solve the urine flow problem. She pointed to the bladder and said, “There is the problem!” I didn’t see anything unusual.
We have a good doctor/patient relationship, because she has found out that I am familiar with most medical terminology, due to helping take care of my wife’s physical problems in her last years, and before that helping my son as he studied to be a Registered Nurse in College. She knows she can just discuss in normal medical terms what is happening, without trying to find words to simplify things.
She smiled as she punched a few keys on the computer, and now the CT scans were in the vertical plane, from front to back. As she moved through the scans the prostate and bladder came into view, stacked as normal. But as she moved farther back, all of a sudden my bladder distended to the right and fell over. The picture kind of reminded me of a beret, falling over to one side over an ear.
She asked if I knew I had a hernia. No, I didn’t. Never noticed any symptoms in my life.
I have an inguinal hernia, but instead of the usual digestive tract pushing through the hole in my peritoneum, my bladder fell through. Or at least part of it. I asked if surgery to implant a mesh suspension under the bladder was next for me. She didn’t think so, although she said she had never seen this condition before.
She is hoping that a laparoscopic procedure to push the bladder up and put some stitches in the peritoneum will suffice. Me, too!
I came back home as she consulted with doctors to find the proper procedure, and of course, my mind has been pondering how I came to have a hernia at this late stage of my life. I am retired and no longer lift heavy machinery parts around the shop. I have always been careful to use my legs, get help if needed, or go get the forklift or overhead crane.
I wondered if long distance bicycle rides might cause problems in the inguinal area. I know some riders have problems with erectile disfunction due to the bicycle seat pressure on the perineum. I can’t see how that would lead to a hernia, though.
Then another thought occurred to me. A year ago, after my first Pfizer vaccination, I got myocarditis and went to the hospital in an ambulance with tachycardia. They stopped the rapid heartbeat in the ER, and the cardiologist scheduled me for a series of heart examinations, including an angiogram.
For the angiogram they insert a catheter into your femoral artery and push up into your heart to study all the valves and passages. The place where the catheter is inserted is right beside the inguinal ligament. Pretty much right where the hernia is.
When they withdraw the catheter, they use an active closure device to block the artery from hemorrhaging. It consists of a collagen piece fastened atop the arterial incision and covered with a thick bandage.
After I got home from the hospital I laid down in bed and tried not to move. When I woke up several hours later, I noticed some bleeding under the bandaged area, and a bit of blood under the skin on my thigh. There was some thought that maybe I should go back to have it checked out, but it seemed that I had achieved hemostasis, even though there was a soft lump under the skin indicating a small thrombus there.
I survived for the next week, and although the bruising and swelling went down I still retained a soft pad above the groin incision. I assumed it was part of the collagen closure device and would dissipate over time.
It never did, and now I wonder if that was my bladder there all along.
Isn’t life exciting? As I get older, it seems to be one exciting moment after another.
Hey, my goal is to live forever. Even with all the excitement, so far, so good.
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