Just didn’t want her to worry.

When I took the hot seat with our family GP, Luisa, sitting at her desk on the one side and my wife Nikki on the other, there was nothing for it but to come clean. Luisa took the lead - asking all the questions;

How often do you get up at night to pee?
How is the flow?
Any discomfort?
Any difficulty?
How is your diet?
How much do you drink?

During the course of our conversation she asked me when I last had a DRE - Digital Rectal Examination - which phrase is entirely self-explanatory. I said a couple of years ago. Luisa looked it up on her system and told me that it was, in fact, five years ago.

I could feel the reproachful stare coming at me from both sides as I tried unsuccessfully to convince them both I had no idea it had been that long.

At this point Luisa told me that she was going to examine me and that this would include a DRE. She proceeded to take my blood pressure. It was high, very high in fact. Luisa suggested perhaps it was high because she had just told me what she was about to do. So off with the trousers and up onto the examination bed (me) and on with the blue plastic gloves (Luisa). She spent some time feeling the lump in my groin, also my abdomen, arm pits, and head and neck. Then the DRE - which was not at all uncomfortable - just a bit embarrassing. I had remembered from the last time, even though it was five years ago, that the most unpleasant thing about it was the excess lubricant left behind when it was over. As I got dressed I was grateful that I had chosen a newer (thicker) pair of undies to wear today. One doesn’t want to be displaying a wet patch.Of course I could have been sensible and asked Luisa for some tissue but in truth I would rather have died there and then than do that. Luisa said she was concerned about an abnormality she had felt on my prostate (you’ll be reading that word a few times from now on). She therefore wanted me to go for a blood test to check my PSA level. That’s Prostate Specific Antigen. She further referred me to the radiology clinic next door for an ultra-sound scan of the lump in my groin. She said she thought it might be a hernia but best to get it checked. And to add to all of that she also referred me to GD, a Hamilton-based urologist. She said she was sufficiently concerned by what she had felt that she wanted me to go and see GD quite urgently regardless of the results of the blood test.

She prescribed 1Mg / day Doxazosin for the blood pressure and said it would also help with the peeing. I told her about the French TV program I had seen where a central character was complaining about the increasing difficulty of peeing as he aged. “I used to pee like a horse - now it’s more like Morse Code.”

We left the surgery feeling strangely optimistic. I said to Nikki “At least she didn’t hit the red button and call the ambulance - so it can’t be that bad”.

What we didn’t realise was that she had done the next best thing. In fact, a number of people since then, including professionals, have expressed surprise at the speed with which things progressed after that first appointment.