My Battle With Prostate Cancer
I have a chronic problem with kidney stones. It was because of this problem that I received a blessing in disguise. While I was seeing my urologist for a scan on pain from a kidney stone, he found some abnormalities. He first noticed that I had a double hernia and also an enlarged prostate. After the hernia surgery, I went back to the urologist to get a psa test.
PSA stands for Prostate specific antigen. Although I’m not a doctor, I learned that it can detect different issues with the prostate. The first is prostatitus. This is some type of infection or inflammation in the pelvic region. The second is an enlarged prostate or BPH which causes difficult urination. Lastly, psa can detect prostate cancer. I have had difficulty urinating for a few years, so I thought for sure that I simply had BPH.
The first psa test turned out to be 4.0 which is not considered to be that much out of the normal range for older men. For a 47 year old, that is a high level so my doctor ordered another psa test. The second test result was a little lower, but not enough for his satisfaction. He scheduled me for a prostate biopsy.
A prostate biopsy does not take very long to complete, about 5-10 minutes. With that being said, I don’t think that it would be something that you want to have repeated. An ultrasound probe is inserted into the rectum. This was the most uncomfortable part of the exam for me. After this a couple of needles are inserted through the intestines to numb when the samples are taken. Several samples are taken of the prostate depending on how large it is. I had twelve samples. While the biopsy is being done you will hear a snapping noise as each sample is taken. After talking to a number of men about this procedure, some said it wasn’t bad at all and others said it was somewhat painful.
I received a call from my doctor to tell me that one of the core samples had cancer. They gave me what was called a Gleason Score. The higher the score, the more serious the condition. Your doctor will fully advise you on what your Gleason Score means for you. I would like to say at this point please do not panic. Prostate cancer is slow growing, so you will have some time to evaluate what is the best course of treatment for you.
There are several types of treatment for prostate cancer. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide what you want to do. In my opinion, younger men would do well with surgery first. Typically surgery can cure you with high results at a young age. It is much harder to do surgery after radiation. For older men, radiation may be the best course if the cancer is in its early stages. Again, your doctor will go over the many choices of how to treat your prostate cancer.
After doing a lot of research, I chose the da Vinci robotic prostatectomy. This is where the prostate is removed by robotic means. It is also not as invasive. Again, after much research I decided on the Vanderbilt clinic in Nashville, Tennessee. It was fairly close – not quite a four hour drive. I would suggest that this be something that you need spend your time carefully considering. Find a surgeon who is well qualified.
My surgery was planned approximately eight weeks after my biopsy. Generally surgeons will not operate until this much time after the biopsy to give the prostate time to heal. I drove to Nashville with my wife the day before to go through preop. They will go over the prep for surgery. The night before is the unpleasant part of prepping which includes drinking some nasty tasting stuff to get your system flushed out.
On the day of surgery, you will meet with your doctor and several other folks, possibly including interns and nurses. To be honest, after they gave me a sedative I don’t remember anything until I woke up. You will not be able to drink anything for almost 24 hours. At least that was the procedure at Vanderbilt. You will also must be able to use the bathroom and walk before you can be discharged.
Four Phases of my recovery:
1. Feeling better from surgery. You will be given medications to help with the pain. The first three or four days I needed to take the medications. In fact, day two was the hardest for me. I don’t know if it was because of the fact that I got into a car and traveled 250 miles the day after surgery, or if it was from the residual effects of the general anesthesia wearing off. After this time, I still occasionally needed a pain pill up to about two weeks after surgery.
2. Getting the catheter out. Most men have their catheter in for 10-14 days. Mine was in for 11 days. It is not painful, but more of a drudgery carrying it around everywhere you go. It needs to be cleaned and emptied fairly often, assuming that you are drinking lots of water. Going to the bathroom can also be painful as some urine or blood may leak out around the tube.
3. Gaining urinary control. You will likely need to wear some type of pad in your underwear to catch any leaking urine. This is a gradual process which may take several weeks or months after the catheter is taken out. Doing Kegel exercises may help speed this process up. I had pain urinating for an additional two to three weeks.
4. Regaining sexual function. This will vary with age, how much nerve tissue was saved during surgery, how sexually active you were before surgery amongst other factors. This is the part of surgery that takes the longest healing time. Some type of medication for male enhancement will be given to help stimulate blood supply so that you can become sexually active again. Some men may not respond well to the medications and will need to explore other avenues that your doctor can share more about.
Recovering from prostate surgery takes time. As some of the pain goes away, other areas may start hurting. This may or may not be normal. Check with your doctor. Everyone is different. Some heal much faster than others. Don’t be discouraged if your progress isn’t as fast as you would like. The golf or tennis game can wait a little while longer. All importantly, find some other men who have gone through this process already. A word of encouragement or prayer can go a long way.
Rich is a Certified Broadcast Meteorologist with 25 years of weather forecasting and television experience. His expertise is in tropical meteorology forecasting hurricanes.
His website TropicalWeather.net is dedicated to helping travelers cope with tropical weather and hurricanes. Visit his hurricane and travel message boards to get the latest hurricane forecasts and travel information.
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