Hello everyone,
I made it through the surgery, but not without a little excitement.
Checked into the hoispital Thursday at 11:00 a.m. It was about 1:00 p.m. before they came and got me to do the pre-op prep. The nurse started an IV and gave me something that was supposed to relax me. Nope! The drug didn't do any such thing but did get rid of a pounding headache that I had for two days, for which I was very thankful for. Since I was the last operation of the day (surprising), they let my wife come sit with me in the pre-op prep area and we talked with the nurses for a while.
Around 2:00 p.m., they came and got me and wheeled me to an ice-cold operating room where I got to meet Mr. Roboto. It wasn't as big as I expected but maybe that was because I was laying on a table and couldn't get the full view of the machine. They put a mask on me and said, "Take a couple of deep breaths" and that was the last thing I remember until I was in my hospital room. By that time, it was about 7:30 p.m. or so and I was still kinda in-and-out of it. What I didn't realize was that the city of Wichita was currently under a Tornado warning and city sirens were going off all over town. My poor wife was freaking and didn't know whether she should stay or go home. Well I guess at some point I was coherent enough to tell her I was OK and sent her home to try and beat the storm. She later told me that the rain was coming down so hard that she couldn't even see the painted stripes on the roadway! I think we got something like three inches of rain within about two hours.
The next day, Friday, I awoke feeling glad that the surgery was now behind me, but I was not feeling well at all. I had a terrible problem with nausea and was not able to hold anything down, including liquids. Can you imagine what vomiting felt like after this kind of operation? OUCH! But by later in the day, I started doing some walking and feeling a bit better. Had a milk shake but still no solid foods. With that, the doctor felt it prudent that I spend another night to make sure everything is OK.
The next day, Saturday, was much better than the day before. I woke up feeling good and ordered myself a nice hardy breakfast. No problem with nausea and I was already up and doing some more walking before my wife showed up at 10 a.m. The doctor-on-call came by, saw that I was much better, and told me I could go home. Yay!
So here I am at my humble abode catching up all my brothers on HW. My urologist told me that the operation went very well though they had to deal with some arteries in places he was not expecting to find and had to deal with a little bleeding though no transfusion of any kind was needed. He said he was very happy with how cleanly both nerve bundles peeled away from the gland and he was able to remove the prostate with no difficulty. He said it was a little enlarged but looked good, meaning it didn't look unhealthy (if it did look 'bad', that might've suggested more serious issues).
So now I'm adjusting to life with the plastic snake coming from my wiener. Had my first shower today since last Thursday and it felt good to be clean again. I'm scheduled for a follow-up exam with the doc on Friday at which time they'll do an x-ray to check my healing, hopefully pull the snake, and then go over the pathology report. I sure hope it's a good one.