The patients in Dr. Wenwu Jin's fifth-floor office on Clay Street in San Francisco's Chinatown are almost all elderly Chinese men and women. I'm one of the few exceptions: a white guy who doesn't speak a word of Chinese and doesn't understand a word of Chinese, either Cantonese or Mandarin. But like Jin's other patients, I've had prostate issues. Whether mine are resolved I don't yet know.
Dr. Jin, a urologist, performed prostate surgery on me at the California Pacific Medical Center on Castro Street near Dubose Park where healthy folks and their dogs frolic. For a couple of years, I would wake up at all hours of the night to pee because of an enlarged prostate. Something had to be done.
For those who don't know — I didn't for a long time— and would like to know, the prostate is a small walnut-shaped gland or organ below the bladder and in front of the rectum. Its primary function is to make fluids in the sperm and force the semen through the urethra during ejaculation. My high school teachers didn't say anything about it.
The more you age, the larger the prostate grows. At 18, 28 and 58 men need a prostate; as they age they don't. I put off the procedure until the end of this July; that’s when I decided I might as well go under the knife sooner rather than later, while I was still ambulatory and in decent health, at least for an 82-year-old who has had far too many surgeries than he'd like.
My first surgery took place in the late 1940s when I was five; doctors removed my tonsils, though they botched the operation and I had to return to the hospital to have the damage repaired. In bed and recuperating, my dad brought me two toy guns, a holster and caps, which distracted me for a few days. Over the next seven or so decades more surgeries punctuated my life, culminating, most recently, with the procedure to shrink my enlarged prostate. The medical staff at Davies called it a "procedure" not a surgery probably because procedure sounds less invasive than surgery. But it's still invasive.
In the late 1960s, doctors at Roosevelt Hospital stitched my head after New York City cops cracked it. They didn't bother with five fingers that still look like they've been broken. Back in the 1990s, I had surgery to repair a torn Achilles Tendon on my right leg, followed by surgery in 2000 in Redwood City to remove a benign tumor on the left side of my head that damaged my hearing, my left eye and nerves.
I don't think of myself as an expert on the receiving end of surgery, but I think that six surgeries qualify me as a specialist of sorts. I played football and lacrosse in high school and rugby in college but broke no bones. I got off easy and thought I was indestructible until I clashed with cops in the street. I still remember the nightmares I had during my tonsillectomy and its aftermath, the long recovery from a ruptured Achilles Tendon when I could not put weight on my right foot and couldn't drive. I remember the beautiful anesthesiologist who put me under for brain surgery, and the heart surgery that left me with a scar on my chest.
What these surgeries have in common, is that they've been invasive. They've disrupted routines and have taken a toll on the mind as well as the body. I put off prostate surgery for three years and relied on meds, which helped. But surgery has had a way of catching up with me.
Dr. Jin sent me home from Davies without a catheter: a bag with a tube that's normally inserted into the penis and gently pushed into the bladder. He was overly confident. I had to return to his Clay Street office; it wasn't as painful as I thought it would be. He performed the procedure as soon as I arrived.
Now, at home the catheter fills up nicely with blood and urine . I empty it a few times a day, drink liquids and rest. I thought I would bounce back quickly but I'm taking it a day at a time, spending mornings and nights in bed, skimming a trashy novel about finance capitalism and reading newspapers and magazines.
For prostate health, doctors recommend a healthy diet with fresh vegetables, a minimum of red meat, exercise, drinking eight cups of water daily, and not smoking. For a few years that regime worked. Then I had to break down and go to Davies. Will I have another surgery? I don't want to think about it.
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