Previously to that on MondoBlahBlah...
Previous to that on MondoBlahBlah...
Even more previously than that on MondoBlahBlah...
It’s all gone now. All the bandages and
adhesive (taking a lot of hair with it). The Jackson-Pratt drain
(an ingeniously simple device for eliminating yucky stuff). The Foley catheter (another
ingenious, though vastly more annoying device for draining yucky stuff). And of
course all the incidental bits including the prostate itself, the seminal
vesicles, a few lymph nodes and a bit of adjacent fat, just for the fun of it.
All gone. I am now off the meds and able to move freely about the cabin. The gooey
morsels have been transferred to a spooky lab in the bowels of the NIH for
slicing and dicing and I expect to get a report about how awesome they all were
within a couple of weeks.
Finally disconnected from the tubes and
tapes I ran right home from the hospital and cut the grass. Funny how strong the
domestic instinct becomes – after literally watching the grass grow outside my
window for a week I couldn’t wait to attack it with my handy lawn grooming
implements and bring my property back into compliance with the neighborhood’s
unspoken standard of landscaping conformity. The next day I strolled with a
friend to the local brewery for lunch. Mmm, beer. Not better than OxyContin,
but tastier for sure.
It should have been harder. From some of
the stories people shared with me, I was expecting recovery to be a horrifying experience
leading to the possibility of having an indwelling urinal catheter for the rest
of my life, having life-threateningly impacted bowels requiring an extremely
risky experimental “caca-ectomy”, and possibly ending up in an iron lung.
Thanks all for sharing the harrowing tales of your father-in-law, the husband of
someone you work with and some guy you once knew. They prepared me for the
worst eventuality, which happily did not come to pass. While I was still in the
hospital, in preparation for the possibility that stairs might prove impossible
during my convalescence, the Managing Partner rearranged our guest bedroom. We
thought I might have to stay there for weeks. I lasted one night before moving
back to my gloriously sunny master bedroom upstairs. Stairs have proved no
impediment. There are presumably limits to the physical activities in which I
should engage, but if you saw me in public, two weeks out of surgery, you would
no longer be repelled as if from some shambling, broken thing.
If the story you shared (or have heard) was
over about ten years old, we’re really talking about a completely different
procedure. Robotic
laparoscopy has revolutionized prostate surgery. Likewise, if your
father-in-law was over 65 when he had his surgery, it stands to reason his
recovery would be more difficult than that of a 51 year old. AND, as most of
you know, I have the body of an elite athlete. A true Adonis-like specimen, me.
The doctors keep making reference to my “athletic” profile contributing to the
prospect of a rapid recovery, which I find absolutely hilarious. This designation
derives from my marginally enlarged heart which manifests itself in a low
resting heart rate and very slightly abnormal EKG results. It is testament to
my consistent cycling over the past decade (though still only barely achieving
recommended guidelines for regular exercise) and the wretched health of the American
general public that a middle age, overweight, former chain smoker is identified
as an “athlete.” Combined with the unparalleled skill of the NIH surgical team, my relative youth (ha!) and extreme
vigor (kack!) portend a speedy return to normal human activity.
