Surgery

Back in May I announced I had Prostate Cancer.  The doctor also said I was too heavy to have surgery to remove the prostate.  That launched me on a diet.  The first one I have ever taken seriously in my life.

As time went on I slipped off the straight and narrow from time to time but made a discovery.  The success of the diet wasn't so much a testiment to the supervised fast I was on as it was an indictment of the way I used to eat.  One piece of fried chicken became a guilty pleasure.  I didn't need four, with two mashed potatoes...and gravy.

By September I has lost sixty five pounds.  The Doctor scheduled me to have a prostatectomy on October 15.  We arrived at the Medical Center at 5:30 AM and got all the paperwork taken care of.  Finally I went in to the little room, changed into the hospital gown and put my fate in the hand of the doctors and God.

The surgery was prefromed as scheduled.  I had a superb team working on me.  I expected great discomfort when I woke up, but that didn't happen.

This was mainly due to the pain meds I know, but they did it right.  Most of Monday was spent drifting in and out of lala land.  I have no memory of many of the folks that came to see me.  Sorry about that folks.  Because of that fuzzy state of affairs I wasn't sure what I had heard from the doctor until he came back on Tuesday to look me over one more time before sending me home.

Something I have not shared here earlier was that I had been told I was not looking at a cure, but a long fight.  Due to the aggressive nature of my cancer, and the size of the mass that appeared on the sonogram it was probably not contained in the prostate.  This was going to be round one.

Fine - bring it on!

But the report from the doctor was that the female hormone implant (Yes guys, you too can exerience hot flashes!) had done a good job of shrinking the tumor and the prostate.

What I hadn't expected to hear was that there was on sign of the tumor penetrating the prostate wall.  It appeared to be cantained.  The doctor took a number of samples, and found nothing malignant in the ones he had recieved results on.  I don't want to jinx it, but he may have gotten it all.

The doctor is good, and I take nothing away from him.  I also think the prayers, candles, drums and good thoughts from family and friends went a long way toward helping me out here.  I've been like the guy in the fox hole that is wearing a cross, a star of David, Ankh, Turkish moon, and Pentagram.  I'll take all the help I can get.  I want to thank everyone who appealed to the powers that be on my behalf.

I go back in two weeks for the follow up.  I'll let you know what I learn then.