You should avoid a few things such as antihistamines and decongestants
which can slightly enlarge(temporarily) an already enlarged prostate
and make urination difficult or impossible. This can mean a trip to
the ER.

Good luck. Your watchful waiting may be uneventful.

Fred

Taking SP in tablet form myself and it makes one hell of a difference to me!

I don't know why you say that. A friend of mine had bladder cancer along
with all the usual stuff we suffer in here. All they did was put something
up his penis into his bladder, inject a chemical through that which
basically made the wall of the bladder fall off and pulled it out. They kept
doing that to the wall (which is like an onion, in layers) until they got it
all.

So, his bladder was OK through all that.

The watch and wait is important for a couple of reasons. When your
symptoms are mild you don't do anything except monitor the condition
until you can no longer tolerate the symptoms. Then you do something.
That point when you can no longer tolerate the effects of bph is
different for different men.

Also a different treatment may appear during the time when you are
waiting. I had bph for at least 5 years before I did anything. My uro
suggested open surgery, not a TURP, because of the size of the
prostate. During that time period laser surgery had advanced and
become common. Lasers can do the same cutting that a hot wire does
during a TURP, but the laser has the huge benefit of cauterizing much
better than the hot wire does. That is the reason that my uro wanted
to do open surgery. There would have been too much bleeding with a
TURP. I selected another uro and had laser surgery. That choice would
not have been available earlier. Who knows what advancements will be
made in the next 5 years.

Al said "I don't understand watch and wait for BPH, since we know it
causes damage to the bladder over time, and we know it is misery to
live with, and we know there are medical treatments, and surgical
treatments for it."

On the other hand, all BPH treatments, medical or surgical, do have
side-effects, and these need to be balanced against the symptoms. If
the symptoms aren't severe, I guess 'watch and wait' could be an
acceptable strategy, provided it really was *watch* and wait and not
just a euphemism for doing nothing.

Any such strategy could include:

- regular bladder ultrasound to check for retention of urine - making
sure the bladder isn't getting overloaded by the effort to push urine
out, and there is no reservoir for infection.

- regular testing for urine infection - making doubly sure there is no
threat to the kidneys.

Neither of these tests is invasive - or very expensive. Provided they
were done, I doubt if there would be any serious risk of 'silent'
damage?

Richard Slessor