Part 6 - My personal experiences with Prostate Cancer

During Da Vinci surgery they lay you on your stomach, with your head lower than your feet. After 6 hours, my wife said I came back to the room with a face looking like the Pillsbury dough boy. By the time I came to, my face had normalized.

When I awoke, I was higher than a kite. I think they give me OxyContin for pain, which I usually cannot tolerate. The anti-nausea medicine they gave allowed me to tolerate it. As a result I was incredibly goofy even though I didn't remember it later. My poor wife - she waited through the surgery, and then had to put up with a comedy routine by the Pillsbury dough boy!  She was exhausted, and slept for a few hours in the room. Suddenly I had an incredible thirst and tried to wake her for some water. My mouth was so dry that I couldn’t talk higher than faint croak. Thankfully a nurse came in with water eventually.

As the meds wore off, a nurse came in and said “I’m going to make your day – I’m going to remove your catheter”.  Luckily my wife was there and set her straight. Putting a catheter back in without being drugged would not have been fun. This highlighted the fact that it’s always a good idea to have a family member to be your guardian angel during surgery – people can make mistakes!

My surgery took place during the night and by early morning they asked me if I could walk. I jumped at that chance, because I know that as soon as you could walk (and fart) you could go home. I walked several times during that morning, working up to multiple laps. During one of my walks I heard two nurses talking – one of them said “that’s the one”. I guess the news of my OxyContin-fueled comedy routine got around!

I was home in less than a day after surgery, and initially I felt pretty good. The pain was not so bad - I got by on high test acetaminophen They said to keep on walking, and I did laps around the rooms in the house. I felt well enough to attend Thanksgiving dinner the next day – hey this surgery thing is a piece of cake!

Remember that nurse’s warning about “some swelling”?  I remember back one fall marveling at a sheep’s udder at the Big E Fair – it looked so disproportionate on such a small animal. Very quickly I had what looked like a sheep’s udder between my legs!

I had left the hospital with a catheter, and the normal time that a person needs a catheter after prostate surgery is about a week. I had a one week visit with my surgeon and learned (no surprise) that I would need additional time because of all the swelling. It took a total of 3 weeks before it could be removed, and not before I was prescribed some strong diuretics. Those were 3 of the longest weeks of my life.

Once the catheter was removed, I was back at work in a about a week. But my treatments were not over yet…