“..the holiday season is a good time not only to tell stories of miracles, but to think about the miracles in your own life, and to be grateful for them.” – Lemony Snicket.

On Christmas night, I had a good night’s sleep. For most people, that is not a big deal. For me, it was a Christmas miracle. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in years.

This is a true story about a miracle that I normally would not care to write about, but which needs to be shared. I finally love the truth more than my pride and even my dignity.

That took a very long time, I cherish it.

Five years ago, I developed what I began to call an old man’s medical problem, one familiar to so many men in their 60’s and 70’s, but which is rarely spoken of openly.

My older friends and I sometimes joke about it, but it isn’t really that funny. My younger friends and have no idea what I am talking about. And to be honest, I rarely talked about it at all.

What happened was my prostate began to close up,  blocking the bladder from moving urine easily through the urinary tract. This happens as men age.

I began to urinate often, and sometimes urgently.

Gradually but relentlessly, I began to urinate frequently at night, sometimes five or six times, and as the prostate condition developed even eight or nine times.

Sometimes the urinating was so “urgent,” as the doctors call it, that I risked dribbling or accidents. This wreaked havoc with my sleeping.

I refused to consider a diaper, and I refused to see a urologist. I’d heard stories about how they examine older men with urinary issues, and I didn’t want to undergo that.

I saw all those dumb and vague ads in which men are urged to “talk to their doctors” if they have “problems” going to the bathroom.

The ads are vague and obtuse, and mostly creepy. They wouldn’t get me to cross the street.

I accepted sleepless nights and days and weeks of interrupted sleep. I just thought it was my fate, and I always accept my fate.

For as long as I remember now, I  woke up exhausted and had to take increasingly frequent naps.

A person of strong will and the capacity for great denial, I accepted this as just another reality of aging.

Old Talk, I call it, a way for men to deny reality and endure needless pain, suffering, even death. But it is a medical condition, a frequent symptom of diabetes, or taking numerous medications.

It can also be caused by urinary tract infections, cancer, kidney stones, or prostate problems. The doctors call it Polyuria or Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH).

Old talk is dangerous. It can kill. So can denial of the symptoms of heart failure. I’ve tried both. It didn’t work out well for me.

A year or so ago, I finally told my primary care nurse practitioner that I was frequently peeing and it was making sleep difficult or impossible.

This was beginning to affect my sex life, which greatly disturbed me. She said it wasn’t healthy and I needed to address it.

I  told her I had not had sex for some years before meeting Maria, and I do not intend to give it up again, no matter how long I live.

She said I should see a urologist. I said I wasn’t ready for that; she said, “well, when it gets unbearable, maybe you will.” It got unbearable.

It is amazing how much agony a stubborn human being can bear.

I was exhausted almost every day. I managed to work around it and write around it. It turns out I have enormous energy (so doctors tell me) for a man my age. “I’m 40,” one of them told me, “I couldn’t live with as little sleep as you are getting.”

Finally, I went to see a new primary care physician about a year and a half ago (the first one moved away); she seemed to care about me, and listen to me and helped guide me through the heart surgeries I needed and a brief cancer scare.

She helped me get my diabetic numbers consistently where they should normally be after a heart operation threw them off-kilter.

It was ironic that the first person I was comfortable talking to about this problem was a woman. I trusted her, and she knew how to speak to me. This wasn’t something I really even wanted to discuss with Maria, who I trust above all others.

A few months ago, I was so tired and was sleeping so little that I started taking naps at 10 a.m., just a few hours after I used to wake up.

Sometimes I got two or three hours of sleep, sometimes none that I could remembers.

One morning, I realized this was a serious problem and surrendered to reality and called my primary caregiver. One thing is almost universally true about aging: we need our sleep.

She referred me to a highly recommended urologist. I went to see Dr. Seth Cepello.

He subjected me to all of the tests I heard so much about, and some were uncomfortable, but not very.

The thing I had been avoiding for years was painless and quick, if not especially dignified. But neither is wearing a diaper or sleeping with a urinal next to a bed.

He recommended surgery. He said I had the perfect prostate for it.

He was the first person ever to explain how polyuria works, how the bladder can’t move the urine through the urinary tract as it normally would because, in my case, the prostate is the case of many older men closes up as men get older.

Urinary issues like mine – Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia – affect nearly 40 million Americans – more than 40 percent of men in their 50’s and more than 70 percent of men in their 60’s. BPH has nothing to do with prostate cancer.

But it can sure knock the stuffing out of the quality of life.

In my case, my problem wasn’t from diabetes; I didn’t have cancer; I didn’t have a urinary infection. I had a prostate problem caused by a very common thing – aging.

It is not especially glamorous, but it caused me more suffering and discomfort than anything in my life apart from heart disease.

Dr. Cepello said there was a new procedure called Uro-Lift that was developed a few years ago.

A surgeon enters the body through the penis – the patient is made to sleep – and pulls the prostate apart permanently through clips and pins. No outward part of the body is cut or opened.

Dr. Cepello has performed more than 200 of these surgeries. They are not, he says, for everyone. The prostate has to be a certain square shape open in the middle. Mine was closing up.

My cardiologist recommended this procedure very highly. “This will be very good for you,” she said.

The surgery isn’t invasive but is serious enough to require anesthesia and a regular hospital operating suite.

Maybe that was just for me because of my recent heart catheterizations.

Recovery takes a few days and can take a few weeks for the bladder to respond to the pulled apart prostate. There is some pain, some blood in the urine, and my case, some exhaustion from the surgery.

I had the operation last Monday, and the first 48 hours were tough for me, and no doubt, for Maria, who took care of me. I was a mess.

My plumbing, as Dr. Cepello put it, was confused and dysfunctional after the procedure. I urinated frequently and urgently and sometimes couldn’t make it to the bathroom.

Two days after my surgery, Maria and I left the farm for two days of peace in a beautiful Vermont country inn that knows us well and takes good care of us. It is a restful and beautiful place. More importantly, it is a place where I rest easily and quickly.

I needed that.

At home, there are so many things to distract and engage me.

The first night was rough; I was up all night as my bladder and prostate freaked out together. Dr. Cepello warned me that this would happen, but he didn’t offer lots of details.

On Christmas Day, all of that changed.

At bedtime, I took two Melatonin gummy bears and watched the Office TV show in bed with Maria. As soon as the program was over, I kissed Maria good night and rolled over. It’s the last thing I remember until I woke up and looked at the clock. It was at 6 o’clock.

Selfishly, I woke Maria up shouting, “I slept, I got a good night’s sleep!” and we both danced up and down like high school kids celebrating a basketball victory.

Truthfully, I could not remember the last time I slept that long or that well. It was a completely different feeling, different energy.

Sleeping was always something I took for granted, and not sleeping was a difficult experience for me, especially since I thought it was an untreatable aging condition.

Since Christmas Day, I have stopped going to the bathroom frequently, and never urgently. My urine is clear; I have no burning or stinging in my penis or pain in the pelvic area. I don’t need a urinal, as I urinate much less frequently and without urgency.

As I did after my heart procedures, I feel energetic, focused, and far more peaceful. In the morning, I am as alert and focused as I always was.

Aging is not something that dominates my life, nor is it something I should hide from. There are no miracles for people my age.

Heart disease is not curable but treatable. The same is true with diabetes. And so, it seems, the same is true with urinary and prostate issues. Death will come for all of us, but we don’t have to invite it in or die a thousand cuts.

I do not expect to turn the clock back or live forever without trouble or pain. Even our medical technology only goes so far. But the heart procedures have saved my life and greatly approved the quality of it.

I felt the same thing the night of my Christmas miracle. I have learned a powerful lesson about aging. It is what you make of it. I live a full and meaningful life at an age few men lived to see even 50 years ago. I’m going to use those years well.

That means being open to help.

I know not to diagnose myself or permit old talk to defeat or define me. You are as old as you think you are spiritually and emotionally. There is real help for people who age.

And help helps. I learned this when I broke down a decade ago, but I guess the message didn’t stick.

I hope our nation awakens and makes sure every person has access to the kind of care I’ve had the blessing of receiving this year.

This kind of hope and renewal should be available to all people.  It is barbaric to deny it to people who need it. This is a human right, especially in a country so wealthy.

I thank you for sharing in this Christmas miracle. I’m glad I am secure enough finally to tell the story.

This Christmas, I got back the gift of sleep, a tiny thing in the scheme of things, but a huge thing for me.

A Christmas miracle.