Getting Older

The human body is a wonderful creation and if you’re lucky it just goes on year after year. Women seem to have a little problem with theirs, it’s called, ‘the change’. When my wife went through the change I thought that maybe she might really change and that might be for the better.

Now us men over 40, usually find out about a little gland that we have in our body from our Doctor. I found out when my Doctor asked me, one day. “When was the last time you had your Prostrate checked?”
“My ‘WHAT’?” I ask.
“Your Prostrate Gland,” he repeats, “when was the last time you had it checked?”
“I don’t know Doc, are you sure I have one and if I do, I guess I should have it checked, if you think so. What do we have to do?”
“Well first I want you to drop your pants and shorts and lean over the bed there.” He said as he snapped on a pair of rubber gloves. I think that at this point I detected a slight hint of glee in his voice.

I won’t give you a blow by blow description, but I will tell you that I was humiliated.

“I don’t feel any lumps on it, no sign of cancer, but it is a little enlarged. I think you should see an Urologist and have it checked out. I’ll have my receptionist make an appointment for you.”

I got everything pulled up and went out to the receptionist desk to wait for her to get an appointment for me. I could tell by the hint of a smile that she knew what the doctor had been doing to me. I left the office with all this newfound information running through my head; Prostrate, Urologist and of course the dreaded cancer.

On the designated day of my appointment I went to the Urologist and he started asking me questions.
“Do you find yourself getting up a lot during the night to urinate?”
“Yeah, but isn’t that normal for a man, my age?”
“Do you find that you have trouble urinating straight and some times dribble on your pant leg?”
“Yeah, but isn’t that normal for a man, my age?”
“Do you find that you don’t have the pressure you used to, when you urinate?”
“You bet your rubber gloves, I don’t. When I was younger I use to be able to write my full name, all 26 letters in the snow bank. Now I have to put a stencil between my feet just to write Mel.”
“Well we had better have a look,” he said and I heard the dreaded snap of the rubber gloves. Oh the humiliation of it all.

After he finished his look or should I say feel, he got a little plastic model of a prostate, down from a shelf. He had plastic models of all different parts of a person’s anatomy. ‘Wow!’ I thought to my self, someone makes a living, making all these models of prostates and things. He explained to me that the urine runs down through this tube from the bladder, through the prostate and out (you know were). All they had to do is to run this reamer up through, you know what and ream out the prostrate.

‘Holy cow!’ I thought, ‘That’s like re-boring a V8-Chevy through the tail pipe’. The sweat was running down my forehead as I was thinking, ‘the pain’, while this Doctor is Rotor-Rooting my privates.

I decided to go through with the (quote/unquote) operation. The day I checked into the hospital I was almost petrified with fear of what was going to transpire. ‘Oh the pain,’ I thought, ‘I hope I don’t breakdown and cry.’

All this worry was to no avail, no pain, a little discomfort, but no pain. The operation was a total success and this winter I expect to be writing poems in the snow and with enough coffee, I’ll sign them.

Maybe when I retire, I’ll make little plastic prostrates.