Prostate Workup
I had two of these sessions and some of the similarities between them were quite striking. The first was in a large hospital in the Upper Valley, and it was somewhat apropos of a prostate infection I mysteriously contracted, for which I was prescribed a large dose of Cipro. I guess my GP wanted me to go to a specialist to “follow up.” They had me urinate into a special toilet with a rotating disk and a paper printout emerged which reported the velocity of the stream. After finishing, I was made to lie down in an examining room where a nurse put an ultrasound device over my bladder and commented with some alarm that I still had urine in there. It seemed that the whole routine was setup to 1.) make me feel bad about the flow rate (a young hatchet faced doctor remarked that it “wasn’t great”) and 2.) to make me panic about the fact that I had not expelled all of the urine. It turns out that the whole routine was a preamble to persuade me to try a new medication called Flomax. The second was a year or two later, I went to a different urologist in White River Junction, and got exactly the same routine. I have to wonder whether the doctors were collecting some kind of commission for prescribing the stuff. Now, 20 years later, it is a generic medication (tamsulosin) and I really do have difficulty urinating, especially at night, and it is a godsend.