And Now a Word From My Oncologist

This letter recently arrived in the US Mail.  Considering all of the radiation side effects I've had since the seed implant procedure on 2/29 I wonder if I'll receive another letter when the radiation declines by the first half life.

Brachytherapy After Ten Days

I've been home from surgery for a week and recovery hasn't been as uneventful as the pre-surgery handout from my urologist promised.

So now I've met the O/R and know that I never want to go back.  I found an O/R to be quite an assembly line.  When I was doing all of my paperwork in the waiting room prior to the big event there was a woman with a cane bitching to staff and anybody who would listen about her eye and what some distant relative nurse she found on Facebook told her to tell the doctors that they must do.  When I regained consciousness after my procedure one of the first things I heard was the same woman, only a partition curtain away, telling the doctors in the O/R what some distant relative nurse she found on Facebook told her that they must do.  I met the urologist and oncologist who worked on me prior to my going into the O/R but I haven't seen them since.  

I've seen what the Foley catheter looks like installed on/in me and unfortunately it's something that can't ever be unseen, it looked like someone had successfully grafted my Johnson to a garden hose connector ("connection adapter", shown below minus the internal parts that snake into the bladder), plumbing fit for Frankenstein.  I knew beforehand that the Foley catheter was going to be part of the show and I chose willful ignorance prior to the procedure and being whacked out on anesthesia during since there was no way I could prevent its use.  I knew that such a device existed but had never seen one because I don't hang out in hospitals or look at kinky plumbing prØn.  

Once implanted and radioactive I was uncoupled from the hospital's electronics and plumbing I was placed into a wheelchair and sent out of the hospital with a single pain pill, a handout describing what I should do to for a successful recovery and a post card where I could rate my experience and express my customer service concerns to the hospital.  All of the hospital staff that I interacted with were courteous, pleasant and polite but there was no box that I could check that said, "please don't attach hospital equipment to my wiener", so I threw the postcard away.  

My recovery is coming along more slowly than I was led to believe it would.  Other than having prostate cancer I'm in fairly good health so I feel for any guy who isn't in good health and has to withstand this kind of well intentioned abuse.  I quickly came to feel as if someone had repeatedly stomped my genital area with hobnailed boots.  I had to pee frequently but couldn't produce and I found that incredibly frustrating and frightening.  I'd sit like a girl for 20 minutes trying to fight overwhelmingly unpleasant sensations as I tried to start the flow of the river from my yellow headwaters.  Eleanor got used to me closing the bathroom door behind me and having sessions of grunting and loud cursing.  In retirement a man needs to keep his mind working  so I've taken to cursing in Russian (link NSFW!) and да (yes), I'm also teaching myself the Cyrillic alphabet.  ебаTь!

I'm leaving the house on a daily basis now and advance scouting for bathrooms wherever I go because I never know when I'm going to suddenly be in need of relief.  At night I awake and roll out of bed every hour and a half to urinate, or attempt to, and I find this incredibly annoying (although not as annoying as having an advanced cancer).  My hospital handout says that this sleep disturbing side effect of my treatment can linger for months.

Next, many physical journeys by aircraft, automobiles and truck will culminate in the new home that awaits us as I work toward living happily ever after and cancer free.

Achy-Brachytherapy

My cancer now has a 2nd glowing sole print on its ass.  I reported to the hospital bright and early and allowed them to sedate me and then to somehow implant radioactivity on the cancerous areas of my prostate gland.  I say somehow because I encouraged them to use enough anesthesia to bomb me back to the stone age.  I wasn't aware of what they did or how they did it.

Next stop: the O/R where cancer gets the 2nd of a radioactive 1,2 punch

But when they were done I sure knew.  While I was off pounding cold ones with Fred and Barney I had a Foley catheter installed.  Modesty prevents me from relating exactly what that is, where they stuck it or what it looked like when properly installed so click on the link (SFW) and all will be revealed.  When I woke up I was in pain all over.  My throat hurt because they had stuck some kind of breathing apparatus down in there.  My insides hurt where my new radioactive seeds, the ones that I'll take to my grave, now live.  My wiener hurt and my bladder was screaming that I had to pee like it was filled with jellied fire.

Not knowing where I was and not quite conscious I think that I tried to get up with the intention of finding a men's room.  But I still had tubes in me and wired sensors on me, some of which I'm told that I ripped out.  Oh, and the Foley catheter was still properly plumbed.  My struggle is what the nurse told me caused the big blood stain on the bed.   The nurse warned me that when he removed Mr. Foley's catheter it would be painful and boy was he ever right.  I screamed from the intense burning pain in a very personal place where I had never felt pain before.  They sent me home wearing a maxi-pad.

When I got home I motored around my house under my own power.  I'm uncomfortable and when I urinate it burns like I'm peeing Drano but the doctors said that I should feel better in a few days.  I'm carrying enough internal radiation to arouse the TSA or ICE from their slumber but I have a card attesting to my nuclear non-proliferation status to show them at the airport or the Canadian border.  My post-op instructions say to not allow little children to sit on my lap due to radiation and to take it easy for a few weeks.

My urologist says that if the scan I'm to receive shortly shows the seeds taking root in the right place I'm good to go, to move to our new home and to live out the rest of my days happily ever after.

Graduation From External Radiation

Although I'm still left with the side effects of 5 weeks of radiation Godzilla is safely back in his cage.  Soon I will get internal radiation and then hopefully be on my way to beating cancer and selling our house.

Man Plans and God Laughs

I've encountered a major obstacle in my retirement plan of selling our home and moving into our new home presently under construction in Arizona. I've been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

My urologist and oncologist say that it's probably treatable with a triple play of hormones, radiation and something called brachytherapy ("seeds"). One thing is for sure, the house in Arizona is being built and cannot be cancelled, the only way for me to get out of this financial legal responsibility would be for cancer to win and for the builder to sort it all out with my widow and my estate. On the day that I received my cancer diagnosis I also received an email with a picture of the first home site construction activity, the foundation being poured, so now the race is on.

This is the sort of health crisis that I've always feared even as I knew it would increase in probability as I aged. It means having for the first time to stick my head deep into the mouth of the medical/insurance lion. When we move to Arizona we will lose my wife's insurance and be cast into the Obamacare cauldron.

There have been bright spots though. My GP and urologist say that they found it early. Bone and CT scans show that the cancer has not spread. Right now I feel fine physically, if the doctors hadn't told me I'd never know. My wife is down for the struggle and as long as she's working we both have good insurance. I contacted my surgeon friend in San Diego and he was much more than just supportive, he spoke with my oncologist and asked him the questions that I'd never know to ask. He also checked out the triple play I'm about to undergo with several oncologists and urologists at his hospital, in essence giving me a 2nd and 3rd opinion because when it comes to complex life and death personal medical questions like this WTF do I know?

When the house in Arizona is completed the builder will summon me to come with payment. I can have the money to give them if we sell the house here. I can only sell the house here if my treatment is complete and I'm cancer free. So as I said earlier, the race is on. Assuming I'll be cured, will the house be completed first or will I be cancer free first? As of last contact all of the wooden bones of the new house are up and the new home is quickly taking shape down there. Here's my to do list, any one item alone would be a major undertaking:

• Beat cancer 
• Cough up a large sum of money and give it to the builder in Arizona 
• Sell our old house  
• Pack all of our belongings and get them to AZ (method to be determined) 
• Unpack and then move in to our new home and feather the new nest with appliances, bed, utilities and the basics 
• Obtain and pay for new health insurance on the open market (Obamacare) 

So I guess that my retirement won't be as peaceful as I had planned, at least not in the short run. I'm glad that I managed to get in the Asia trip last year and the cross country drive earlier this year. It appears that I'm in for quite an eventful tail end of 2015 and 2016 and if/when I emerge on the other side of all of this I might be a changed man, at least emotionally if not physically as well. But we play the hand that we're dealt, nothing in life is guaranteed and nobody gets out of life alive. It's just that as we age these truths that we've heard all of our lives slowly become more obvious.

I'm an MRI machine, let me see if your cancer has spread.