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Two months ago I began to notice red blood at the end of my urine flow, only three to five drops. This was not related to any other kidney or bladder symptoms. I am two and a half years since my last HBRT. It lasted for 10 days and went away, but returned a week later for three days. Any experiences out there? Rick.
Lars, a good friend of mine had a similar problem Christmas before last, about five or six years after his radiation therapy. He lives in Sweden and is not really to hot at Internet work, so he asked me if iI could suggest anything. He had been to his doctor who had said that if the bleeding did not stop they would start an internal bladder investigation and look to try some form of cauterisation if they could identify where the bleeding started.
I did some searches and found quite a number of discussions on the subject in PCa Forums - but very little scientific material.
It seemed in most cases that the medical world was somewhat flummoxed by these events and had no real answer as to cause - and without cause, it is difficult to suggest cure.
What caught my eye though was the number of men who related the bleeding to drinking red wine!! Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous, but when I spoke to Lars, who I knew liked a drop of red, he said that he had indeed consumed a pretty fair quamtity over rhe Holidays. He had about ten days to go before his investigative procedure, so I suggested he stopped the red wine intake and report back to me. The bleeding stopped, he cancelled the investigation, it has not started again and he sips a glass of red of an evening now, rather than quaffing a larger quantity.
I'd be very interested if you related to that experience at all - perhaps not only with red wine, but alcohol intake?
I'd strongly advise having a urologist take a look inside your bladder asap. I knew of Terry's friend and stopped red wine for a period with no effect. In my case the blood in urine was very slight - just a pink stain at the start of a pee - and seemed trivial. It first arose a couple of years after EBRT and became more severe last Autumn - about three and a half years after EBRT. It was put down to a side effect of the radiation. It was indeed, as was what followed. To cut a long story short, I have bladder cancer and face four months of chemotherapy plus a possible radical cystectomy and this for three little tumours too small to show in a CT scan.
The quicker bladder cancer is treated the easier the treatment and the better the chance of a cure. I hope what you are experiencing is harmless, but better safe than sorry - act quickly, my friend. As soon as I got worried about the bleeding, it was already too late.
There was just an extensive discussion of this on Prostate Pointers. It seems that this is a common occurrance at and about the three year mark. It is caused by the radiation affecting the blood vessels and the body adapting by creating new more fragile vessels. These vessels sometimes burst. Most of the time these symptoms will disappear on their own and other times the vessles can be cauterized by a simple procedure. You should always get checked out by a urologist to insure that this is the cause of the bleeding and it is not due to other causes.
Aloha Rick,
It is good advice that you follow up on blood in urine. About 3 years after IMRT/ADT I began releasing blood and clots that looked like long skinny red worms. About a month later the pain of passing urine was so bad, I started pain management. This started in Jan 2010. By Oct things were going badly. Catheters made it worse, so a Supra Pubic Catheter was inserted into the bladder which bypassed the urethra, however I still leaked and needed the pain management. In Jan 2011 started using a home unit mild HBOT and was able to get off PM that June. The Uro Doc feels that my next step is uro-ostomy as the bladder is in bad shape. Cancer has not been detected yet, but is expected.
Also, catheters in the bladder do cause blood & clots but should not cause pain. Apparently my pain came from a wound in the urethra which is not healing. When you piss on a wound, it hurts.
Joe
