The Urine Test

In a recent edition of the Otago Daily Times, there was a reprint of an essay Chris Harris wrote on the need to find a better method of detecting prostate cancer.

At present one of the prime methods used is a biopsy in which a needle is pushed up into the man's anus, and then through the wall dividing the bowel and the prostate. Tiny pieces of his prostate are chipped off and then sent to the lab for examination. This is the examination I had back in late 2008. There were complications as a result of this biopsy which I describe in some detail in my ebook, Diary of a Prostate Wimp. [This ebook is currently available at half-price at Smashwords to support Movember, the prostate cancer month.]

The problem with this biopsy - the transrectal method - is that infection can easily occur. In fact, men are routinely given antibiotics after the biopsy because it's assumed there will be infections. It's hardly surprising that there are, because the wall between two parts of the body - one of them intended to deal with faecal matter - is pierced and broken open. It's a bit like sticking your hand in a toilet, then using your hand straightaway to put food in your mouth. If you don't get infected, it'll be surprising.

Chris Harris wrote about a new option that's being looked at to avoid this biopsy. Currently several PSA blood tests are done before a biopsy is considered, in tandem with the unpleasant finger up the bum approach that shows whether the prostate is unduly enlarged or not. Chris says the PSA test was never designed to do what it's being used for now, and writes: 'We aim to take a more direct approach by analysing small amounts of prostate cells exfoliated in urine. There is evidence that very small amounts of prostate cancer cells, between one and a few dozen, are shed normally into the urine at an early stage of the disease. Our aim is to pick out these cancer cells and extract molecular information from them to predict if a tumour is going to become a malignant monster or a benign wimp.'

It's normal for men's prostates to enlarge as they get older. Most of the time this isn't anything to do with cancer; it's a common problem many men will have to deal with - as I did. Surgery is performed to decrease the size of the prostate, thus allowing the urinary tract to function properly. (The urinary tract gets blocked by the prostate rather like a large stone in a small river bed.)

There is hope that the urine test will be readily available soon - possibly within months. In the UK, trial tests of the urine samples were accurate in about 70% of cases. However Chris warns that there is still work to be done to ensure thorough accuracy. And of course, as always, funding is a problem.

Age creepeth on

I had no idea what adipex diet pills were, so had to look them up. And I did, and found a 'review' site of them which was sort of positive about them - and sort of not. I think on the basis of this review I wouldn't be trying them, quite apart from the fact that I'm not overweight enough to worry about it.
Which isn't what I set out to write. But my wife went to England (via Auckland and Kuala Lumpur) this morning (no, not all in one morning - come on!) and I'm feeling distinctly unsettled. People go on about 'baching' (as in being a bachelor for a period of time). Can't say it's a state I'm particularly keen to go back to. When you've been married as long as I have (36 years) you're pretty closely tied up with the person you've spent so much time with; at the moment there's a great sense of absence in the house.
And it's been a bit of a week, all up. Some stressful times at work which I won't go into here, but some other stressful things on top of that.
I went to get my driver's licence renewed, for example. You might remember that I had a bit of eyelid surgery about ten days ago. The eyelid's looking good, but the eye itself took a bit of time to recover; in fact I was getting worried that it might have got damaged during the few brief minutes of the op. Don't think it did, but the antibiotic cream I was using for the eyelid certainly blurred things up tremendously, and even when I stopped using it the eye didn't seem to seeing things as clearly as I thought it should. The left eye seems to be doing most of the work, in fact.
To get back to the driver's licence. I went into the AA office here, paid my money, had my photo taken (took them umpteen attempts) and tried to do their eyetest. Crikey, I thought I'd gone blind.
The first lot of letters were an absolute blur, and I only started seeing things more clearly when they upped the size of the letters. And then I was told that there were three columns of letters when my eyes saw only two - and a big black blank where the third column should have been. The girl behind the counter insisted there were three columns; I insisted there were two. Didn't even get as far as checking my peripheral vision.
Felt quite gloomy and began to wonder if my eyesight was going completely. However, a quick trip to the optician's (an old acquaintance outside of his speciality) and it proved that there was nothing more wrong with my eyes than there has been for decades. I've had glasses since I was about nine, as far as I recall.
I could read his charts with ease, and tracked the peripheral light thingee with no problems. Pooh to the AA eye test machine, I say. In fact I later wrote to the AA Head Office, online, and told them that I thought it was a bit of a poor show that they had a machine that doesn't work for most of their customers - it's commonplace for people to wind up either at their doctor's or their optician's surgeries because they're 'failed' the eyesight test at AA, or haven't even bothered to give it a try because they know already how inefficient it is.
No doubt they'll respond by installing up-to-date, brand new, perfectly attuned machines in every one of their offices.
The other 'stress' was that I had to go to Work and Income to apply for my superannuation, which the Government is kindly giving to me after all these years. This shouldn't have been any big deal - people turn 65 every day - but the milestone of it affected me, and I felt quite nervous. And old.
Anyway, thanks to my daughter, who's adept at making sure every i has been dotted and t crossed, the application form was perfect when presented to the woman at W&I (bar one minimal easily-sorted thing) and I had all the right bits of paper to prove who I was, several times over. Notice that my daughter checked all this through before I went. Doesn't that say something about impending age...?

The photo is by Zarko Drincic - he also drew the original picture.