Bloody urine and radiation cystitis? But I had radiation for prostate cancer five years ago!

 

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• insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results…

• Radiation is a bit like Round Up (the grass killer). If you spray grass with it, the grass doesn’t immediately die…it takes days to weeks. And then is some spots, the brownis grass turns green again.  So if you have radiation today…some of the deliterious effects of it might not become manifest until years later. In most cases it will be something related to how one voids or the quality of the erection. I put this in my book, and my comments may come across as biased (whatever) but a lot of my patients that I follow who have had radiation and then have problems in these areas down the road are surprised. I am talking about intelligent patients who did their homework. Why are they surprised? Where they not told? Did they not listen? Or did not think there would be any consequence to the radiation?
• When I look into the bladder with cystoscopy of a patient who had radiation, and this can be true for seeds as well, I see blanched mucosa with prominent blood vessels. This is called radiation cystitis.  Over the years have had many patients with this and clinically this manifests as hematuria, urgency and other irritative voiding symptoms. I have seen urethra strictures from seeds. I have had to fulgurate bladders for refractory bleeding from radiation cystitis from radiation five years previously.
• Is this a reason not to choose radiation? No, not on this alone. My point is just to know what you are getting into with any of the treatments.
• When it comes to any treatment, but particularly radiation…there is the now, and then there is the later.
• Pay me now…or Pay me later comes to mind.