Raising awareness about a common condition in men as they age.
It's called BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia), more commonly known as enlarged prostate.
It's not cancer, but it can be quality of life changing.
"I couldn't go to the bathroom. So, I assumed it was a kidney stone or something like that," said John DeSimone, of Coventry.
Looking back though, this 58-year-old realized he had been having problems urinating over a course of years.
"I was urinating less and less and more frequently," said DeSimone. His wife of 15 years urged him to get it checked out.
Turned out he had an enlarged prostate.
"The prostate is part of the urinary tract. It's one of the few organs that doesn't stop growing as men age and as the prostate grows, it creates sort of constriction and pressure on the urethra and causes a lot of the problems men associate with getting older," explained Dr. Samuel Eaton who's with the Minimally Invasive Urology Institute out of Lifespan.
He specifically works out of Newport Hospital.
The reality is this is a part of getting older. But it's treatable. DeSimone, unfortunately, waited too long.
“When John came to me, he was having significant issues. It had gotten to the point where he was actually in complete urinary retention, he was not able to go on his own," said Eaton.
Surgery would have been his only option but then Eaton offered him a newer, approach. Laser surgery which he says, has a few advantages.
"So, one: because of the laser there's less bleeding associated and so more patients are able to go home the same day," said Eaton.
"The other advantage is that it allows us to treat patients with wider variety of prostate sizes, so prostates can get incredibly large and the standard procedures don’t work as well for that."
DeSimone fell in to that last category. His laser surgery was a year ago.
"I'm actually probably where I was twenty years ago," said DeSimone.
There are a few messages here: "It doesn't happen overnight," said Eaton. "Because the symptoms come on slowly and gradually, a lot of men may wait until the last minute where things are really severe."
"Just pay attention to your body as you get older," added DeSimone.
This laser option is only available at Newport Hospital in Rhode Island. The idea, though, is to catch it early enough where medications may make a difference.