Before we begin this episode, I need to correct an error from the last episode. I sent you to the Prostate Cancer Foundation website for some great resources but in speaking too quickly I said PCF.com. I should have said PCF.org. PCF.com is the web address for the Pacific Coast Feather Company who makes wonderful pillows and comforters but is not very helpful with advice on prostate cancer. Sorry about that. PCF.org is where you want to go.
Several years before my surgery I had an accident on a two wheeled vehicle, I’d like say it was a Harley or I wiped out on my bicycle while getting a great work out, no the truth was I fell off my wife’s scooter while going down my own street. I fell off landed on my right shoulder which them jammed my arm into my ribs and I really messed up my ribs. I have a new appreciation for QB’s that put on a flack jacket and play with injured ribs. I went to the doctor and he prescribed Percocet for me. This happened on Saturday, so I took the meds Saturday and Sunday but I had to drive to Minneapolis on Monday for an awards dinner on Tuesday. So I skipped Monday until I got into town, once I got there other people would drive for me. Monday was fine I got back on the painkiller once I got into town. Tuesday back on the painkillers during the day then I hosted the dinner and all was well until later in the evening. I wasn’t feeling well. I couldn’t go to the bathroom…#2 not #1. #1 is never a problem for me. After talking with my wife that night she shared with me that constipation is a side effect from taking Percocet. Great. By 1:00am I’m in agony. I sought out a 24 Walgreens. The weather was horrible, thunder, lightning and pouring rain but it didn’t matter, I needed relief. I made my purchase and headed back to the hotel. You never realize how much you use your rib cage to perform almost every task. A sneeze could bring tears as could a cough. OK, I send in the troops and then a little while later time to go. Now I’m sure the people in the surrounding rooms thought there was a murder taking place as I bore down to have a movement. Oh my gosh, what agony….never again. I told everyone that since I wasn’t driving the rest of the week I’d be medicating with alcohol.
So what does that story have to do with my surgery? Let me get you back up to speed.
As I mentioned at the end of the previous episode I woke up in recovery three and a half hours later than I should have then I blacked out again. I finally woke up in my hospital room. My wife was there as were my kids.
Sure enough IV’s are still stuck in me as are other monitors. I realized I had a catheter in me which was expected. A drain for the blood that I wasn’t expecting. There are sleeves on my legs that feel like they are squeezing then releasing pressure. I guess that’s for circulation and blood clots. One of the machines was the morphine drip for the pain. Now the nurses tell you don’t be afraid to us the drip, stay ahead of the pain if you fall behind the pain will be much worse. Meanwhile you have the doctors saying, lay off the pain killers we need you to move your bowels before you home. Immediately I’m taken back to that night at the Minneapolis Embassy Suite. Oh hell no I’m not going through any of that again.
I asked my wife what kind of complications were there? What happened? They informed her at noon that the surgery was going fine but it was taking longer than they thought because I was large. Seriously? Three extra hours because I was fat? Whatever, just as long as it went well. Doctor D came in explained that the surgery went well, they felt pretty good about the clean margins. Again we’ll have to wait for pathology. Get some rest..don’t overdue the pain killers we need you to poop before you go.
My wife and kids are there but I can tell their tired, so I ask them to leave, I’ll be fine.
Soon after my family left in came the nurse, time to walk. Getting me out of bed was less than graceful. All the machines had to come along for the walk as did my sidekick….my little urine bag. We walked up and down the hallway. I knew this was important, the last thing I want are blood clots or pneumonia. Gotta walk. One lap of the hall and then back to bed.
When I’m at home I sleep with a CPAP and I love it. I call it my little dream machine and I sleep like crap without it. When I asked the nurse she told me because of the morphine drip I can’t be on a CPAP, they need to monitor my breathing. Ok I understand. I’m not going to argue with a nurse. I’m not going to be that patient. I’d rather be know on the floor as the nice, funny cooperative patient. I think you get better care that way.
Sometime around midnight they rolled in another patient next door. Oh my this guy was in miserable pain. All night all he did was moan. It was endless. I turned on the tv and watched a documentary on Daniel Boone and then who knows what, just anything to drown out some of the noise. I was delighted when the nurse came in to take me on my walk, let’s do two laps!
Somewhere around the middle of the night I started getting a pain, not from the operation. No this pain I know all too well and it’s only happened once in my life. My right big toe feels like it’s on fire….this can’t be right….this isn’t a side effect is it? The nurse came in for my next walk, going down the hallway, yep no doubt about it. I’m getting a gout flare. If you’re unfamiliar with “the ailment of kings” as it’s called, it’s freaking painful. So painful that if you put a bed sheet on your toe they can peel you off the ceiling. Crap….I have to get up and walk on this thing every hour. This sucks. Back to bed…hit the morphine.
The next morning I’m up early to have breakfast and take me for my walk. When we came back I chose the chair over the bed. I much preferred sitting up. By now I’m done with the morphine but my toe is still kind of bothering me me. At this point I’m blowing into this device to measure how my lungs are working. I’ll realize in a couple weeks just how important this step is.
The day itself is really uneventful. Sit watch TV, getup and walk, blow into this plastic thing and rinse and repeat. This went on until 6:30 at night when they decide to release me. Yes, 6:30 at night. By the way I still had not pooped.
The nurse came in and taught us all about the catheter. How to change bags from the large at home model to the leg mounted stadium buddy. They roll me out get me into the car (Ouch) give us a couple of prescriptions to fill on the way home. Pain killers, stool softeners and I don’t remember what else. What I did not get was anything for my toe, just contact your doctor if it gets unbearable.
To say the drive home was uncomfortable would be an understatement. I felt every bump, every crack or leaf in the road. Cindy tried to miss them….or did she? Yes she did, but I felt everything.
When we got home the first thought was to go upstairs and get me into bed. However it hurt to lay flat, at least it did for me. We tried pillows and what have you but nothing worked, I decided to go downstairs and try sitting in my SnoozeMaster 5000 sofa recliner. This feels much better. This will work. So I set up shop in the family room. Meanwhile Scooter my beagel/basset hound mix is very upset he can’t get near me yet. I’m sure in his little mind he’s thinking Dad is broken, I’m his buddy he needs me! With the catheter tube hanging out the last thing I need is a jumping dog.
In my case right now there are two dogs. My oldest son and his wife came back to Illinois from Kansas for a few days to help get me back on my feet. With them they brought their dog Payton. Patyon is a golden retriever/ border collie mix that my son rescued while stationed in Mississippi. I guess I should mention my son is in the Air Force. During different times of his training Payton would come and live with us. We are very familiar with each other. Payton used to climb up on the recliner and sleep between my legs resting his head on my stomach as his big fluffy pillow. Scooter would then climb up and sleep next to me on the couch with his head on my leg. Right now both of them are caged off from me.
Ok, so now I’m on the recliner in the family room but my wife is not comfortable at all about the bag of urine and the hardwood floors so we fetched a metal pail we had and the bag clipped on the inside. Ok, I’m now good when I’m sitting but I have to get up and walk 10 minutes every hour. Just like in the hospital but carrying this bag of urine with a painful toe was not the answer. My son helped at first carrying the bag but that wasn’t right for me to ask that of him. BY the way….helpful tip. The bag of urine MUST stay below the level of your penis. If you reverse the flow bad things happen, such as feeling the equivalent of an electric shock up your penis. Consider yourself told. I’m pretty confident in saying the only upside to the catheter is you can watch football all day and never get up to go to the bathroom.
Back to walking my laps… I had a moment of brilliance that was about to make life much easier for everyone. Years back I made a gag 50th birthday present for a friend of mine. We were both Scouters and we loved hiking, backpacking and camping. When he turned 50 I made him a hiking pole for a Senior Citizen. I took a standard hiking pole, cut off the bottom and fitted the bottom of an old persons cane with the four feet on it. The kind they used to put tennis balls on. I called it the Senior Summit, made some fake packaging, It looked really good like something that was sold in a store. Well when I turned 50 a few years later guess what I got back as a gift…..yep the Senior Summit. It was in my basement collecting dust.
I told my son to go get that pole and grab me a wire coat hanger. A few twists of the hanger to get the height right and now I have a cane I can walk with and it will hold my catheter bag. Brilliance! I am now free to get up and move about the cabin.
BY the time all of this gets figured out it’s about 11:00 and everyone is tired. I stay downstairs and everyone else is off to bed. The first night my son was really good about getting me up and walking. After a day or two with some effort I managed to get up out of the recliner on my own for my walks.
One thing I will say…I have cable with what seems like a thousand stations but there is never anything good to watch in the middle of the night unless you want a Jacklyn Smith beauty treatment, some type of new ninja cooking tool Or the Little Giant Ladder system.
Somehow I stumbled on a station called RFD…they have a show that comes on late at night called Country’s Family Reunion which just so happened to feature a reunion of the cast of Hee Haw.. Honestly I got hooked on this show.
OK, back to serious stuff the senior summit pole made it so I could get up and walk around by myself. Every hour I’d tour my lower level of the house for 10 minutes and then back to the SnoozeMaster. The next morning the gout flare was in full blossom. I had a visiting nurse come out to check on the catheter instruct on cleaning and care. This was also when I found out you can’t treat gout with anti-inflammatory drugs after surgery. Ice, elevate and grin and bear it. The pain killers they gave me was the prescription as what I was given for my accident. Nope, not taking that. All I took was your basic Tylenol. Thankfully within a couple days the gout subsided.
One important thing I want to point out to everyone is to continue using that plastic breathing device they give you. I used it religiously for the first week then I kind of ignored it. Big mistake. Since I was sill stuck on the couch and at this point kind of working on my laptop I didn’t get up as often as I was supposed to. Breathing became an issue and painful. Once I went back to that device everything soon got better. Until your up and about on a regular basis keep using that thing.
My oldest son stayed with me for my fist week, he was a god send helping me get up and move around in those first few days. And during those first few days the dogs were behind gates staying away from me…then the jailbreak happened. Somehow the gate came down and both dogs Scooter and Payton charged into the room to see me. Both of these dogs are roughly 40 pounds. Scooter jumped up on my side but Payton charged right at me, leaped over the metal bucket and landed on my chest. I saw him coming and I managed to cover my nether region in time. My son thought he killed me but it was fine. Lots of licks and then we all settled in together. From that point Scooter never left my side. He was my constant companion as gentle as he could be to me. Almost like he realized dad was broken.
By the end of the first week I was up on my own. I could walk stairs, go to the bathroom, shower by myself, and do all things on my own. My wife went back to work.
In my case the catheter was in for almost two weeks. That thing probably caused me the most anxiety. You worry…Is it going to come out on it’s own. What do I do if it does. If you push too hard while pooping can you blow it out. None of that happened.
And here’s a little tidbit for you, yes I was getting night erections. Not to full mast mind you and not the most comfortable thing with a catheter in you but this was promising to say the least.
When the doctor took it out it was much less eventful than I was anticipating. You hear a lot about pinching and discomfort, that was not my experience. For the second time if felt like something was being pulled through my body. When they took the drain out of my abdomen that was much more uncomfortable.
Do you dribble for a few days after the catheter comes out, yes I did but it wasn’t that bad. Pick up a few Depends for that period and you’ll be fine. Do your Kegel Exercises like they tell you!
A follow up visit with the doctor in early November then the first PSA test that really counts in January. Until that point, no heavy lifting just healing. Fingers are crossed. I hope this is the end of it.
Next time on Prostate Cancer Sucks but there is Always Hope….How can I have PSA count without a prostate…..next steps……Home Depot will never be the same.
Prostate Cancer Sucks 