40 year old, worried about symptoms

You would be very young to have prostate cancer or prostate enlargement, but it's right that your doctor has referred you to get symptoms checked out, and you want to get whatever the issue is fixed.

Solifenacin is a drug to help reduce bladder spasms. This is where the bladder contracts to generate a sense of urgency to pee before it filled up. Some things can be bladder irritants to some people, causing bladder spasms, and these include alcohol, fizzy drinks, caffeine, some acidic fruit drinks, and concentrated urine (due to being dehydrated, and often caused by drinking less fluids, incorrectly thinking it will help a urinary issue). If you are having bladder spasms, cutting these out for a few weeks will tell you if that's the issue, and then reintroducing one at a time might identify which are doing it for you. Bladder spasms can also be caused by outflow obstruction (peeing slowly). There are other drugs which can help with that depending on the cause, which they might offer you after tests.

Hi col, 

As Andy says it is very unlikely to be prostate cancer at your age. Symptoms like back pain etc. do occur with advanced prostate cancer, but if you had advanced prostate cancer, when your doctor examined your prostate he would be very unlikely to consider it felt normal.

The needing to pee constantly, the fits and starts, in my case successfully peeing a lot but then needing to pee again within less than an hour were symptoms of urinary retention.

For some people the retention is total and needs treating at A and E immediately. For me I could manage to pee but was hardly emptying my bladder. When I did get to A and E and had  a catheter. I had about 900ml of urine in my bladder a normal bladder is full at about 500ml.

So I think it is possible you have retention and in my case it was the prostate causing the problem. I don't know what else could cause retention, maybe kidney stones? 

Anyway whatever it is it needs sorting, but I think worrying that it is prostate cancer should be very low on your list of worries. 

Cheers, John.

On a positive note seems lots of medication to solve these issues. Lots of people in worse situations. Thank you for the advise. 

In the interceding eight weeks you might ask your doctor whether he thinks a tablet called Tamulosin, sometimes combined with a tablet called Finasteride might help with your flow problems in the short term.

Worth a try?

Best of luck.

Cheers, John.

Whatever this is the symptom seems to be urinary retention. I think for most people the retention stops peeing completely and that is a very serious problem so straight to A and E.  For me I could just about pee sometimes it was almost a normal amount but I still needed to pee half an hour later.

Because I could just about pee it took four days between the onset of the problem and finally getting treatment. NHS111 and my GP were fine, the GP said you need a catheter go to A and E. 

A and E was a very poor service, four hour wait as to be expected. A doctor came to see me I said I could just about pee and he said well I'm not putting a catheter in if you can still pee. There was some talk of a bladder scanner but apparently that was broken. About an hour later two nurses turned up having found a scanner, my bladder had 500ml according to the scanner in so it clearly was retaining. Another hour later two nurses turned up to put a catheter in. This drained in to a bag after a little while it was nearly full, so after finding a nurse it was taken off and another one attached, the nurse wrote on my records 440ml which was the contents of the first bag. I then filled the second bag and a third was put on which just filled slowly. I asked why she had written 440ml on my records, she said "that was the contents of the first bag", I said "what about the second?", she said "we have to write the contents of the first bag". I actually think they are supposed to write the amount of retention which for me was about 900ml, but I think she had misunderstood her training. 

Anyway retention can damage your kidneys, I think you have had it a while I don't think an 8 week wait is a good idea. You can buy Tamsulosin over the counter branded as "Flowmax" if you want to try it and see if it works (it didn't for me). I would seriously think about getting to A and E or finding the local NHS continence service, to whom I believe you can self refer, and they should be able to do a bladder scan and fit a catheter if needed.

I don't think you should let them fob you off just because you can pee a little.

OK That's good. Do you then feel like you need to pee again within an hour? If so I would be a bit worried, if you can then go for perhaps three hours before you next want to pee then I guess you probably did fully empty your bladder so I wouldn't be quite so worried. 

Been to A and E. Had a bladder scan I had 200m in it and emptied it to 6m. They seem to think it a feeling or sensation. I asked about prostate etc they said the urologist in May will check kidneys, tubes, prostate. That's where I am at.

After 2-3 weeks taking solfacicin sulfate nothing has changed and I have all the symptoms of prostatitis. Lower back pain, awful flow, sore testicles, etc etc. Having read up on this it says it is difficult to treat? I have a flow test in 2 weeks