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How to pee during the night
This is a serious question, and I'll appreciate your suggestions.
I had radiation 5 years ago, and just recently completed salvage brachy. So, now my bladder area is pretty pissed off.
During the day, I can pee "normally" (that is, post- PCa diagnosis "normal"), but at night it's a different story. It seems that if I lie prostrate, my prostate shuts off its valve. (I don't think I've ever used prostrate and prostate in the same sentence before, but I digress).
So, I wake up every 2 hours or so with a strong urge to pee. So far I've tried two options: one is standing at the toilet and waiting. That one isn't working very well, so I usually sit on the toilet, which is more comfortable, and in 2-3 minutes the drops start coming. I can sit there for 5 minutes or so until the drops reach the critial amount to relieve the urge (50-100 mls is my guess), or, once the drops start coming I can stand up to finish the performance a bit quicker.
My next house will have a urinal, but I digress.
I'm considering another option: walking around the house for 5 minutes, and then try peeing standing up. It seems that every morning, by the time I've finished grinding my coffee beans and cooking my oatmeal, I am ready and able to pee almost normally.
The downside to walking around for 5 minutes is that it may be harder to fall back asleep.
Does anyone have any special tricks to share?
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I had my Prostate removed at Mayo almost 5 months ago with good results, so far undetectable PSA.
I'm 72 and started having difficulty Urinating at night about 12 years ago, even though I had a fairly small prostate. The meds mentioned by others helped a great deal for several years then slowly quit helping. I started going thru what you mentioned walking around the house for 10 minutes in the middle of the night until I could go. The Mayo doctor had me do a Urological Study before my prostate was removed. As I understood his explanation is that I had damaged my bladder from years of urinary retention. He said the study showed I start to slowly drain (dribble) then I begin using my external muscles to put pressure on the bladder to force out more of the urine, which he said is still a long-term problem because I am still leaving a lot of urine in my bladder, and will continue to injure the bladder. He wants to do another Urodynamic Study at 6 months. He said I probably have self-catherization in my future.
In the meantime I have significantly improved my night time episodes by avoiding bladder irritants and not drinking hardly any fluids after dinner. I went real restrictive initially cutting out coffee, caffeine, carbonated drinks, alcohol, acidic foods etc. Helped significantly with me sleeping thru the night. Kind of a boring dietary package but Im slowly been reintroducing some of the items without restarting the problems (instead of 2 cups of coffee, I went to 1 cup of decaf). I really like not waking up 3 times a night and standing in front of the toilet trying to get started.
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3 ReactionsThanks for all the replies.
I'm getting a little better, possibly because I just added Oxybutynin to my multi-pill daily consumption.
Cutting back on coffee means cutting back on joy, for me. Is it the caffeine or the acid in coffee? I've been using more yerba mate and less coffee, hoping to trick my bladder.
The person who wrote the message just prior to your message, found that switching to decaf did resolve some of his problems.
Hey, do caffeine first thing in the morning and decaf later in the day?
I was going to suggest Oxy as it sounds like you are having bladder spasm's. When I blew up on the table twice in one session due to urgency during salvage I told them I would not get back on that table until they finally treated my bladder urgency that I had been telling them about for 2 weeks. Out came the script for Oxybutynin. I terminated the practice afterwards. ( I digress)