BPH AND ITS GIFTS
Toilet Training for a Senior Citizen
It wasn’t so hard the first time
I have an enlarged prostate. It’s not the scary big C kind, just the effing annoying BPH kind. Some nights it was yanking me out of bed every hour and a half to lurch to the toilet.
I asked my doctor; he offered pills. I don’t like pills, so I opted for kegels and toilet training. Lots and lots of kegels mixed with trying to get my annoyed bladder to get better at staying full longer than it wants to. A fun challenge!
I like to get the deets, as the kids say. Or do they? Deets might be so last year, right? Whatever — I like to know the mechanics and the biology, or at least as much as I can understand. So I asked my pal ChatGPT.
None of what follows is medical advice. If you are having any kind of bladder issues, see a doctor. I did, and in addition to BPH, they found a spot of bladder cancer. My father died of cancer because he ignored symptoms for too long.
According to ChatGPT, there are two muscles involved in bladder control. I don’t know where CGT got its medical training, but it says my bladder has a detrusor muscle that relaxes as my bladder needs more room for urine. The pelvic floor muscles support the bladder and the prostate and keep the exit doors closed. When…
