HoLEP recovery

@patrick78 After this last UTI, I messaged my urologist. I got an appointment next week on the 20th. Going to do a second cystoscopy . The first was nearly 1 year ago. He has another urologist that came out of retirement to help him and he is going to do the procedure so it will be a new set of eyes looking for what may be causing my UTI’s. In the meant time I go to my nephrologist tomorrow to check on my kidneys. I waited over 18 months to get an appointment. Living in Northwest Arizona limits the number of doctors available. I am on my 5th PCP in 6 years!

Thanks for the report @alexdav . I'm now seventeen days past my HoLEP procedure and have been reading this website and other user experiences to better understand my recovery. So I thought I'd sign up and report my progress.

One thing I've learned is that there is a wide variance in patient experiences. Some men seem to recover quickly with a strong urine stream, others take longer. Some men leak urine. Others don't. For me, my daytime flow has improved and I am emptying more of my bladder. I do not leak urine. But I still have an initial spurt of bright red blood when I urinate. I thought that would be gone by now. My urologist tells me not to worry, progress is often uneven. But I'm disappointed that I still have blood. I think I know why. I've long suffered from constipation and got accustomed to straining when sitting on the pot. I am taking a daily laxative but I still catch myself straining a bit and, when I do that, I get blood out the penis. So I just started using a combo approach—docusate + MiraLAX. I hope that will help.

My issue was difficulty urinating and sudden urgency, particularly at night. My prostate was 65cc when I had the HoLEP. I had been taking tamsulosin (Flomax) for about ten years when it stopped working so well. So the doctor doubled my dose but that didn't help much. Daytime wasn't a problem. But at night I was getting up six to eight times to urinate. That went on for a year. My sleep quality declined. My mood, alertness, overall health and quality of life declined. I discussed all the alternatives with the urologist: UroLift, Rezum, aquablation, HoLEP. I'm older and don't care that much about retrograde ejaculation, so I went with HoLEP.

Overall I'm satisfied although I feel that HoLEP is oversold a bit. Maybe I just didn't understand, but I thought I'd be back to normal in two weeks with a strong urine flow both day and night. But I still need to be careful about exercise, lifting, straining especially since I'm still getting blood. I spent one day doing nothing, just standing or lying down, to minimize any pressure around the perinium. The next morning, I had no blood when urinating. The following few days I walked and sat normally and also was pushing too hard when defecating, and blood came back. So I guess I'll need to be careful for some time. Otherwise, recovery will take even longer.

One thing I'm happy about, my nocturia has gotten better. I place two small cups on the bathroom counter. One cup has eight coffee beans in it, the other has none. When I get up at night to pee I move a bean from the first to the second to keep track of how often I'm getting up. I'm now averaging three to four bathroom trips. Last night was only two. That's a lot better than eight. I'm sleeping better at night, feel more rested during the day. Since that was my main complaint, I'd say the HoLEP is working as advertised. I wish my recovery was completely over and done with. I want to go back to strength training and home repairs. But I better not until the blood is gone and stays gone.