Patient Testimony: Simon's Aquablation Therapy
How we helped Simon with his enlarged prostate
Simon was about to start a marathon when his enlarged prostate stopped him from peeing normally. He visited St John & St Elizabeth Hospital for Aquablation therapy performed by Mr Leye Ajayi. Watch his journey from noticing his symptoms to surgery and recovery 3 months post-surgery.
Find out more about our urology clinic, benign prostate enlargement treatments, Aquablation therapy and the consultant who treated this patient.
Aquablation Therapy at St John & St Elizabeth Hospital – Patient’s Journey Transcript
I had gone to Berlin to run the Berlin Marathon at the end of September and unfortunately the day before the Marathon I started experiencing quite bad symptoms of being unable to pee. Which was obviously extremely uncomfortable and resulted in me starting the race but having to pull out.
A day or two after that, I actually went to an A&E in Germany and they put a catheter in and that solved the problem temporarily at least.
My brother is in the medical profession and so he asked for referral from a from a friend of his and then they recommended Mr Ajayi as being the right person to come to.
My initial appointment with with Mr Ajayi was a consultation. He gave me a couple of tests to do to see if once I’d removed the catheter whether the system would start working again, which it absolutely didn’t and so then he said I would definitely need surgery.
He took me through some various options of which he recommended Aquablation as being the most appropriate surgery. As one does these days, I did a bit of googling to find out what it was because it’s a relatively new procedure, and it certainly made a lot of sense because it’s considerably less invasive.
The procedure was, well, surprisingly painless, given the sort of dread I guess I had but they talked me through it ahead of the procedure and afterwards when I woke up there was surprisingly little pain. Things started working again pretty quickly and I was able to get rid of the painkillers after a couple of days and life has been remarkably normal already.
My experience of the hospital was fantastic from start to finish. I was very impressed by the facilities and most importantly I was exceptionally well looked after by the staff. They couldn’t have been more caring and nicer if they tried.
We met Simon 3 months after his Aquablation Therapy with Mr Ajayi
Since the surgery I’ve had no pain at all and my urination has returned to normal, in fact better than it was before. One of the reasons why Aquablation was recommended to me was that it had the best chances of preserving continence, sexual function and ejaculation after the operation and it has certainly lived up to its promise.
I’m from Zimbabwe and so I needed to get home after the operation and I left London 10 days after the operation and was able to travel comfortably.
I was told that I no longer had to take medication and so I’ve come off that with no ill effects at all. I’m quite a keen runner and in fact I was signed up for a Marathon when this problem arose and so I was keen to get back to it as quickly as possible afterwards and I was back running and did a 10 kilometre run two weeks after the operation. Certainly one of the main benefits of this procedure is that it is minimally invasive and having been through the process I would certainly recommend this surgery to anyone who has problems with an enlarged prostate.