Prostate cancer is a stop-you-dead diagnosis. Every horror story you've ever heard comes back to you in vivid detail. Treatments have terrible side effects, and mean trips to doctor's offices and hospitals (not my favorite places, or yours either). Still, you're not sure which is worse, treating the cancer that has invaded your body, or leaving it there to grow quietly, hoping it won't get any bigger, and more dangerous. It seems like a no-win situation.
For a good many of us, there are no signs at all, for others there are any number of painful, embarrassing symptoms like these...
- You're in the middle of something and you find that you "need to go" again. If you stop to think about it, you're in the restroom much more often than you used to be.
- Your sleep is disrupted by the need to go to the bathroom - it's been happening for long enough now that you've come to expect the nightly wake up call.
- Once you get to the bathroom, you have trouble getting urine to flow - either you can't start a stream, or the flow is interrupted before getting going again.
- You grit your teeth while you pee, trying to tough out the intense burning or searing pain - it gets so you dread going to the bathroom, but there's no escaping the terrible discomfort.
- You've just come from the restroom, and you feel like you could go right back - your bladder never quite feels emptied, even though you know you've just gone.
- Suddenly it's really hard to hold urine back, and you cringe if you feel a leak, hoping no one noticed. Even if they didn't you see the evidence - the tell tale stains in your underwear that have gotten bigger and more noticeable.
- Your intimate relationship isn't what it was... either because of a humiliating inability to get an erection, or because you've had your pleasure abruptly turn to pain during ejaculation - making sex the last thing on your mind.
- You're startled to catch sight of bright, red blood in either your urine or semen - a place you're sure it does not belong, and that frankly scares the life out of you.
Instead, you'll be loosing your chance at an early detection (and nearly 100% survival rates), and leaving a dangerous condition to go unchecked. And, it's entirely possible that even if you have one of more of these terrible symptoms, another treatable condition besides prostate cancer could be the culprit. Find out.
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