Thursday, June 7, 2012

Ragu or Not to Ragu


Ragu or Not to Ragu

For those of you, who are a little squeamish about talking about medical issues involving private parts, go no further.  For the rest of you read on knowing nothing will be too graphic.

I have BPH, which means I have an enlarged prostate.  I have had this for at least 10 years.  It causes me to pee a lot, and to have a high PSA.  None of this is critical except I periodically go for uncomfortable tests which I will not describe.

As a consequence of the BPH, I wake up at night to pee; sometimes more than once.  I have noticed that when we make pasta at home, I wake up much more often during the night.  This doesn’t happen when we eat pasta at a restaurant.  Since we use Ragu as our sauce at home, I have concluded that it is the Ragu which is causing my frequent urination.

Now, fortunately, as you all know, eating at home is an infrequent occurrence, and the making of pasta is only a percentage of the time we eat at home.  Therefore it is a problem which occurs once in a while.

Never the less, I have asked my accommodating wife to switch tomato sauces to avoid this problem. 

She agreed to try various sauces found in Publix Supermarkets.  We have tried Newman’s, Bertolli, Classico, Barillia’s, and various others.  She doesn’t like any of them.

Ragu it remains.  I continue to suffer peeing a lot during the night when we have pasta at home.

Recently, I went to the urologist for a check up.  While there, I asked him “What’s up with Ragu”?

“The Spaghetti sauce?” he asked.

“Yes”, I replied, ‘it makes me pee”.

“Really?” he said, “I don’t know, what makes you say that?”

I told him my theory and evidence.

“Why don’t you stop using Ragu?” he naively asked.

“My wife refuses to change”, I answered, slightly exaggerating.

He looked at me skeptically.

Looking forlorn, I related my wife’s refusal to change, hoping for some sympathy.  I then asked if anyone else has reported this problem.

“Not that I am aware of”, he said.

“How about giving me a prescription that says: No Ragu, so I can show it to my wife”

“Ok, I think I can do that, will it do any good?” he asked.

“Well, I once had the oncologist give me prescription that said “Patients undergoing chemotherapy should not be exposed to paint fumes” in an attempt to get out of house painting,” I replied.

“How did that work”.

“She ignored it. But don’t let that deter you from giving me the prescription.”

We then got into a discussion of which Italian restaurants we thought were the best in the area.

We walked up to the nurse’s station.

“Don’t forget my prescription,” I said.

He wrote one out for me.

“Why don’t you ask your patients if Ragu also affects them like me?” I asked.

“Let me start with these people”, he said, and asked his nurses if they had a problem with Ragu.

 A patient standing nearby also was asked.  Since they were all female, I felt they didn’t count and suggested polling all his male patients. I am not sure if he wanted to follow through with this needed research, but he nodded in a non-committal way and went back to his patients.

I drove home and solemnly presented my wife with the prescription.

She laughed and said “no chance.”