Hi all,

I've been enjoying hearing from the rest of you guys for the past 8 months
or so, and I thought I'd fill you in on what's happening with me.  This is a
very long post--I hope it has some food for thought for some of you.

I'm 57 years old, and for the past year, had been getting up 2 or 3 times a
night, and peeing about hourly during the day, with a weak stream.  I tried
saw palmetto, and in a previous post, said that I had first failed with it,
then succeeded.  Then I slid backwards with it, and now I'm simply not sure.
At any rate, I'm still taking it.

I've visited Dr.Laub in Santa Barbara twice for evaluations.  He ran the
usual tests on me (sonar scan, flow test, urodynamics) to see if PVP was the
way to go (pun unintentional).  By consensus of this newsgroup, he's the
expert out here in Southern California, having done about 80 ops.  I'm glad
to have found him.

On my second visit, because he still wasn't sure whether PVP was indicated,
he recommended that I take Flomax as a diagnostic tool.  He's not sure yet
whether the problem is my bladder or prostate, though he can see that my
prostate is pushing into the bladder.  He said that if Flomax gave me a
great stream, that would be a sign pointing towards the success of PVP.

I HATE to take medications, and in fact have an extremely pure and simple
diet.  The side effects of Flomax, as described by some of you, made me very
reluctant to use it even for a few days.

So I tried something else first.  I wanted to see if there might be a
psychological component to the frequency of my urinating.  So, for the past
10 days or so, I experimented with simply going less often.  Amazingly, it
wasn't that hard to do!  After peeing hourly for a year or more, I simply
let myself FEEL what it was like to have some urine inside me, without
necessarily interpreting it as a sign that I must go to the bathroom.  I
instantly switched from going every hour, to waiting about four hours.

Now I don't claim that this will work for you, but--call me crazy--I can see
that I was exacerbating my own problems by going much more often than
necessary. And the more I went, the more sensitive I became, so the more
often I felt I had to go.

Anyway, I'm now going about every 2 to 4 hours, and generally sleeping about
7 or 8 eight hours before I have to get up.  I can't say I'm always
completely comfortable--but I'm at least as comfortable as when I was going
hourly, and spending a lot less time in the bathroom, and less time worrying
about it.

However, my stream is still small, and, though the tests show that I'm
voiding completely, peeing is not the quick easy flow I'd like it to be.

Back to the Flomax.

Last night I finally got up the courage to try it (as a diagnostic tool, you
understand). I decided to pull open the capsule, empty it onto a piece of
paper, and toss out about half of the dosage.  So I took .2 mg last night.

For the first time in more than a week, I had to get up in the middle of the
night.  Flow seemed about as usual.  But this morning, my flow was
definitely easier.  Not spectacular, but easy enough so that if it was
always like that, I wouldn't even consider surgery.

I just peed again, 3.5 hours after my last one, and again it was a
relatively quick, easy, one.  No delay, no straining.

By the way, there are no obvious side effects from my first .2 mg dosage,
though I'm still not open to the idea of taking ANY medication on a regular
basis.

After writing all this, I just talked to Dr. Laub on the phone. Something
that helps me to really trust him is this:  despite the fact that he's done
80 PVPs and talks very highly of its efficacy, he's in no hurry to do one on
me.  He wants me to continue with the flomax, to see if today's result was
genuine, or a placebo effect.

Another issue is that my PSA at 4.3 is slightly elevated.  He wants me to
get a second PSA test after my flomax trial, because he feels that with the
the obstruction reduced, the PSA level may go down.

So, if you've gotten this far (!) that's it for now.  Keep all the great
contributions coming, and I'll keep you informed as well.

Bruce