6 February - So How Am I Doing?

It is four weeks today since I had my surgery.  There hasn’t been a lot to report since the catheter was removed two weeks ago, but I’ll give you an idea how things are going now. 

First, I am feeling better every day and for that I feel fortunate.  I am making a conscious effort to pace myself, and do not plan ahead.  We decide each day what we may be doing that day.  And it’s working for us. 

For almost all prostate cancer surgery patients, there will be incontinence for the first while.  This can vary from hardly anything, to dribbling on a fairly regular basis, to total incontinence which strikes a minority of patients.  There is hardly any way to predict how this will go.  One indicator is how things were going before the surgery.  I was rarely up at night to go to the bathroom and that is something which many men cope with.  Following directions (as I am prone to do), when I went up to the hospital to have the catheter removed, I took along a pair of briefs (not boxers) and a male guard pad (which we had bought at the drug store).  We had also bought a package of incontinence pads thinking we might need them for our bed or for furniture when I might be overflowing.  We also had a package of Depends for Men available which now have varying designs to make them more appealing (!?!).  By the time I was home a couple of hours the day of decatheterization, I noticed that my underwear and jeans were wet.  So it was necessary to take more drastic action.  I decided to move to the Depends and see how that worked.  It did work much better and there was no overflowing from them.  In the two weeks since, I’ve been trying various methods to see what works best for me.  I realize that every patient is different and that we just have to find the key.  Every recommendation says to continue doing the Kegel abdominal floor exercises, and I do.  I am almost totally dry overnight, but to be so, I am up once and sometimes twice when I feel the need to go.  This is different for me and I’m working at getting so that I can sleep from 11 till 6 (my preferred hours) without getting up at all.  I drink very little after supper in the evening.  I haven’t given up tea, coffee or red wine which is often recommended, but I’ll have to be more desperate before that.  There has been improvement.  I don’t really need the Depends any more, but I am still using them as a precaution over my underwear/pad especially when I am out.  That seems to be working okay.  So this is part of the adventure, one most of us would gladly do without, but it goes with the territory and things could be much worse.  As one patient says, our aim is to become “water tight”, so we’ll see how I’m doing when I see the doctor. 

So what else has been happening?  I am driving now and that doesn’t seem to be a problem.  I haven’t done any long drives, but doing errands etc seems okay.  I do not lift anything over five pounds and won’t for a while yet.  My incision seems to be healing okay.  For a few days it seemed a little red and we wondered if that was okay- it’s amazing how little we know about these things.  The steri-strips came off easily and I think things are healing as they should.  My appetite is good and I am able to enjoy my meals.  We have had visitors here at our place, and we have been out to several things- a meeting, church service, to our son’s for supper and a movie.  Last week we had a 30 cm. snowfall, so the February meeting of our prostate cancer support group was postponed.  It will be held this Wednesday, February 8.  Our guest speaker is John Staples, a local pharmacist, who will discuss alternative treatments for prostate cancer.  I have been able to do some computer work- sending group messages about events etc.  I’ve also written a few articles for the website Helium (www.helium.com).  A couple of these deal with prostate cancer, treatment, symptoms etc. 

There is an interesting new book I’ve discovered which I think might be a help to any newly diagnosed patient:  “The Decision: Your prostate biopsy shows cancer … now what?”  Dr. John C. McHugh, Jennie Cooper Press, 2009   Dr. John McHugh, a urologist in Gainesville, Georgia, for about twenty-five years, was diagnosed with and treated for prostate cancer in 2007. Because he experienced firsthand the difficulty of making the life-changing decision as to treatment, he decided to record his findings both in a book and in a blog on-line. This was a new approach to decision-making, and the feedback from readers and patients has been positive and overwhelming.  There is also an associated website-  http://www.theprostatedecision.wordpress.com/

My next appointment with my urologist is on February 22.  I’ll have blood work done before that and when I see the doctor, he will be able to give me that report along with the report from pathology.  I’ll have my questions ready, and we’ll see where we go from there.  So for the moment, no complaints from my corner.  We’ll just continue healing day by day.