My Journey

[Travis Thompson]

In June of 2008, something happened to me changing my life forever, almost killing me.  This something is termed Prostatitis.  Going on 5 years now, I felt like I was through the woods.  I have spent countless hours on research, visiting urologists, running tests, trying medications, everything under the sun. 

It is my hope in writing this to inspire others for hope and also to record the events of my dysfunction.  Back in 2008 I was 23 years old getting ready to graduate from JMU, in Geography.  I already had a good starter Job, with a local county, collecting GPS points for houses.  I was very eager to start making some decent money considering I busted my hump my whole life for peanuts.  Had I only known...  I graduated in May and had a temp part time job to get me by until the commencement of my County Job.  I would say that things were looking up for me.  I did a lot of driving back then, back to my home town, 7 hour round trip.  I am a type A, and have always been a stressor.  I stress about stress quite literally.  However never had any serious illness.  I was driving back to my college town, nearly in the home stretch, 1 hour to go, outside of Charlottesville VA, when something began to transpire.  I kept thinking that animals were running out in front of me, night time btw.  I couldn’t seem to focus and my heart began to race, fast.  I was for sure I was having a heart attack.  I couldn’t breathe, I became light headed and pulled over off the interstate calling 911 from my cell phone.  I was 100 percent convinced I was dying.  The paramedics got there and my symptoms had decreased.  They said that I had a Panic attack.  My brother picked me up as I was still shaken up and I chalked it up to an isolated incident, induced my too many energy drinks, and lack of sleep.  Several weeks later while driving the same thing began to happen.  They Panic began to increase, until I annexed myself in my room and was scared to even go outside.  I had no idea what was happening to me.  My girlfriend at the time suffered from bi-polarism, and wanted me to see a doctor, in which I did not have medical insurance.  Eventually I found a cheap doctor and gave him 50 bucks, as he diagnosed me with Panic Disorder.  He gave me .25 mg prescription for Xanax.  This medication became a Godsend for me at the time.

A little background info- 

From a broken home, started working full time at 14, began drinking heavily at 14.  Binged in college 5 nights a week and smoked a pack of cigarettes a day.  Did not drink water or exercise the entire 5 years I went to college.  Drank primarily energy drinks and ate whatever I felt like, but do to my high metabolism, looked healthy…

I was also a heavy masturbator at the time (dry) and relied heavily on OTC sleep aids.  Leading up to my Pelvic Floor collapse, I had many nights in which the sleeping medication put me into a half sleep half awake state, very frustrating, and I would always become aroused.  I would masturbate just so I could go to sleep.  However the last few nights before my world officially ended it took hours to ejaculate.  I had no desire for an orgasm but needed to finish.  So there I was cranking away the flesh from my penis just so I could go to sleep.  Safe it to say my lifestyle at that point was in terrible dereliction.  But I was young, still am, about to turn 28, and shook these things off.

A few nights later I was having protected sex, and I never had unprotected sex and had very few partners, always monogamous girlfriends.  Something happened when I ejaculated.  It felt like it got pushed back down through my urethra, which I didn’t even know what that was at the time, aka the shaft.  I went to the bathroom and realized that no semen had entered the condom… very peculiar, and a first, except when I was a young boy.  Speaking to that, I used to get rush migraines upon ejaculating in my early teens.  No semen, not a big deal?  I went to pee and the worst pain I have ever felt tricked through my penis.  OMG! Didn’t know pain like that existed and I have broken many bones.  It brought me to my knees, it was a burning pain, like I was urinating nuclear radiation.  This lasted a couple hours until I could finally get out all of the urine. 

I googled it and didn’t find much.  Again chalked it up as an isolated, painful occurrence. 

The next morning I drove to Maryland to visit a psychiatrist to discuss my ongoing anxiety issues.  During the trip I felt a very weird sensation in my urethra, almost like a tickling sensation.  But I assumed it was leftover from the extreme pain, lingering from the night before.  The next morning I went to Pee and that was when it started.  After completion of my urination a waking nightmare began in which no one could prepare!

I still had to pee?  But there was nothing left.  It was bad!  Like I had been holding it for a month.  I get chills typing this, especially since I am currently suffering from a flare, as I have come to call them.

That extreme urgency to urinate would not go away.  I didn’t know what to do, but it was immediately debilitating, especially not knowing what is going on.  So I chugged cranberry juice and water to try and cleanse my system.  Nothing helped and it was 24/7 urgency and on a scale from 1 to a hundred it was a thousand.  I could not believe I could stay conscience with that amount of discomfort.  I went to the doctor who tested my urine and said that I had a urinary tract infection.  He gave me some Cipro, and sent me packing, said it would be gone within the week.  After a week passed without relief, he advised me to go to the ER, I was in dire pain exacerbated by my anxiety I began a very vicious cycle. I went to the emergency room where I waited hours to be seen and then more hours just to run a urine test.  I think they were trying to make me even more crazy.  They found small trace amounts of blood in the urine but said I was healthy as an ox…  Which was the most frustrating thing I had ever been told.  I was literally about to kill myself from pain and dysfunction, but I was healthy.  They made me leave without any insight as to what the problem was.   I finally got squeezed into see a nurse practitioner at a local urological office in Harrisonburg VA.  She ran some tests and said I had Prostatitis.  Yay! So I thought, they know what it is so they can treat it.  It was several days before July 4, and she prescribed me with more Cipro and some other medication probably Flomax or something.  Then she told me not to expect relief for 1 to 2 months.  That hit my stomach hard.  How could I survive 1 or 2 months, I was surprised I made it this long.  I couldn’t last 1 or two days, minutes even…

                After the symptoms did not go away and everything in my life had come to a depressing halt, I began to seek other doctors until I had tried antibiotics for a year and every medicine you could name.  I stopped all caffeine and alcohol, and became a skinny sad sack of bones, waiting for something.  I barely made it to work, to keep a roof over my head, and I was fortunate to have my girlfriend’s mother at the time, pay for the imaging tests and doctors’ visits.  I used to be life of the party fun guy, and now I WAS HIDING, IN PAIN, WANT TO DIE GUY! 

I began to research online and couldn’t believe how much information was out there or how many people were suffering from this.  It was overwhelming…  Everyone seemed to have a different cure.  I got in contact with some long time sufferers, which gave me hope, even though they had suffered for many years.  But it seemed to be off and on for many. I was at full throttle 24/7.  All the doctors said the same thing, prostatitis, but couldn’t tell me how or why, not that it mattered too much.  I finally found a book called a headache in the pelvis, which really made me see the connection between my anxiety and my symptoms.  I was becoming very well educated on the prostate and its functions, however my symptoms were not going away. 

                I began to little exercises from the book and not sure what happened but at some point the symptoms were slowly tapering off until I stopped reading the forums and caring as much.  This breakthrough helped override my fear of a life doomed in pain. I WOULD SAY THAT MY SYMTOMS, MAINLY URGENCY LASTED A CONSTANT 14 MONTHS, with a little throbbing and burning here and there.

I had a journal but left it behind because I didn’t wanted to be haunted by the past, and began to go back to old habits, trying to be “normal.”  I never knew what caused my flares, it seemed cyclical, and I wish I documented them in more detail.  Its painful to write about, and to talk about it, relive it makes it that much more real.  I never know how long a flare will last, it ranged from 1 day to several months.  However I am about to turn 28 and haven’t had a bad flare up until about three weeks ago.  It slowly has gotten worse and I am living in hell right now.  I just want it removed!  The ironic thing is that I recently gave up drinking and haven’t smoked in a year and a half.  I have come to fear ejaculation, and it is painful most of the time and can cause temporary flares.  Living in fear is terrible.  I am on a better diet but get depressed and order a pizza here and there and I was running about 20 miles a week.  I really wanted to get healthy and up until 3 weeks ago thought I was cured.  Then after a couple panic attacks I ejaculated twice in one day.  I believe this was the onset of my symptoms.  This is the longest bout since I can remember and I have found myself lying to get out of work and veging out on the couch playing video games, which helps distract me from the situation.  I want to be normal, feel normal…  But I know I have a long road ahead and that this nightmare is not over.  However the main message here is that you can heal, that things will get better.  I cannot imagine worse pain, but for anyone suffering to similar issues and dysfunction please provide feedback.  My main issue is the chronic urgency, making it impossible to go anywhere or do anything.

There is so much I left out as far as things I have tried and taken, like silver water and so on…