On Celebrex, Pain, and My ****

[This post contains some detailed descriptions dealing with male anatomy.  If that bothers you, don't read on.]

Just after Christmas, my prostate pain came back.  Truthfully, it never went away, but for most of December it had become mild.  Then it stoked back up for no clear reason.

(I'm trying not to let this blog turn into "My Prostate Blog," but it's what's on my mind lately.  I noticed that my click-rate falls when I blog about this topic, probably because half the population has trouble relating.  But I don't blog for clicks anyway.)

I returned to my urologist and told him that we had no other choice but to do "the test."  As I wrote in previous posts, the best way to know if one's prostatitis is bacterial or non-bacterial is to have a doctor "massage" the prostate (yes, by insertion of a finger through the anus), and then test the fluid that's forced out.  (The fluid isn't semen, but one component of it.) 

From September to November I took a constant string of antibiotics based on my urologist's mere guess that my problem was bacterial.  Many doctors think nothing of prescribing long term antibiotics—they're apparently not up on the latest research about the importance of healthy gut flora. I had reluctantly gone along with antibiotics through the end of November, but when the pain came back, I'd had enough of the indeterminacy.  

My urologist kept delaying testing the prostate fluid because he said the process of forcing it out is painful and sometimes makes prostatitis worse.  I said I had to know before taking any more antibiotics.  I like information, not guesswork.  PLUS, if the test comes back positive, we would know exactly what type of bacteria we're dealing with and what type of antibiotic to use.  

So we did the test.  It was painful, but not excruciating.  In fact, I felt much better for about 2 or 3 days after the test -- something many prostatitis patients experience.  Apparently, draining some of the fluid in the prostate often eases the pain.

To help with the pain until the test results come back, the doctor prescribed Celebrex.  I've never tried it before, but so far it seems to be helping quite a bit.  As far as I can tell, Celebrex has no euphoric affect like Vicodin, Percocet, or Ultram (which is good when I need to work), but seems to reduce the inflammation a lot.  So far, it's been a good week for pain.