Post surgery ward, it is no holiday camp!

But the care was amazing!

Welcome back and thank you for joining me on this shit show of dealing with prostate cancer. Before we carry on, would you do me a massive favour please and hit that subscribe button? There is a free version, and by you subscribing I can start reaching out to some fantastic resources and sharing this into our community.

Now you have kindly done that for me, on with today’s post…

I think that I have missed out a key piece of information on my previous post (Goodbye prostate my old friend)…how the hell did they actually remove my prostate, I hear you ask? Let me summarise this for you…

My new bestie, Dr Akhtar, performed the radical prostatectomy through keyhole surgery and I thought it would be best sharing what the medical people say about this first:

Radical prostatectomy: A radical prostatectomy is a surgical procedure that removes the prostate gland and some surrounding tissue to treat prostate cancer.

Keyhole surgery: Keyhole surgery, also known as minimally invasive surgery, is a surgical procedure that uses small incisions and a camera to access the inside of the body. It can be used to diagnose and treat conditions in the abdomen, pelvis, chest, or spine.

Now, as you would expect, I slept through all of this peacefully unaware that anything was going on down there and when I was fully awake I noted that I had about 5 or 6 staples in around my stomach and a plastic tube hanging from my tinky-winky and one from my tummy. One staple was right below my belly button and this is where Dr Akhtar pulled my prostate out of me. So wish he had filmed that…1979, Sigourney Weaver and Alien spring to mind!

There was some work that he had to do inside of me to tidy things up. You can’t just go pulling a prostate gland out of someone and expect things to work as previously. The uretha (pee pee tube) needs to be reattached to something, preferably the bladder, as this is cut during the surgery as it goes right through the prostate. So after stitching the uretha back to the bladder, in goes the catheter (hence one of the plastic tubes) to allow for everything to heal. Voila, all sorted!

Now let's get back to what happened afterwards.

So after enjoying my post surgery, drug induced sleep, I awoke in the late evening to the sounds of a hospital ward in full action. To paint the picture, there were four beds in this ward. I had the upgraded premium suite with a window overlooking one of the back entrances of the hospital, there was an older gentleman in the bed to my left and Steve was opposite me and bed number four was empty. As I started to become aware of my surroundings, I looked up and I could see Steve sat bolt upright in bed having tea and toast. He looked like he had just woken up from his best sleep ever! WTF Steve, stop looking so bloody good.

Steve: “How you feeling?”

My Brain: “How am I feeling? Seriously Steve, fuck off. I have just had my prostate gland dragged through my belly button, I have a plastic tube hanging from my dick (in fairness, it was great not having to go for a pee all the time) and I am starving with you eating a slice of toast right in front me!”

Me: “Yeah, not too bad thanks”

Steve: “I heard that they saved your one nerve, that is great news mate!”

My Brain: “Standing to attention is the very last thing on my mind right now fella, but appreciate you taking the sideline cheerleader role!”

Me: “Yeah, great news. Tell me, how did you get your tea and toast?”

The rest of the night was a bit of a blur and the gentleman in the bed next to me was having a bit of a hard time settling following his surgery, so I just tried to grab as much rest as I could. In truth, I just lay there thinking about everything that had happened in the last 5 months or so. I can remember it back as being a tough, lonely night and to make things worse I watched Steve opposite me sleep like a baby!

The morning after surgery bought some relieve in the form of the sun streaming in through the window, breakfast in bed and eventually getting to meet Steve properly. Steve was the guy that had his radical prostatectomy before me and he had been one step ahead of me all the previous day, hence he could share with me everything that I was too ‘out-off’ to compute or remember. He also lived in the Hereford (my home town) and had effectively had the exact same prostate cancer diagnosis as myself…yeah, I had found another cancer club member I could share tales with.

Shortly after breakfast, the curtain dividing the space between my bed and the bed to my left got pulled back and so revealed Mr Jones. Mr Jones, who was a sprightly 70 something year old, had surgery a couple of days prior to remove cancer from his bowel. He was having a tough time physically, but mentally he was kicking the ass out of his predicament. A farmer by trade, he was a one tough cookie and took life totally in his stride.

So the first full day after surgery went something like this…snooze, sit uncomfortably in bed, get told by the nurse that I was not drinking enough fluids, snooze, eat, nurse/fluids/not enough conversation again, snooze. You get the picture, pretty uneventful. What I did do was manage to get to know my bed neighbours better. Now Mr Jones has his own farm, got diagnosed with bowel cancer (had it removed, hence him being in the bed next to me), has a lovely wife (she visited and we met her) and has some interesting stories to tell about his life about the good old days (what goes on tour, surgery tour in this case, stays on tour). Now Steve was a few years older than myself and had been in the special forces 🤫 and was now doing security work for the regiment camp. If he could write a book…move on over Andy McNabb!

Steve turned into a bit of a soul mate of mine whilst in hospital, this guy had been given the same diagnosis as myself and had pretty much been through exactly the same experience since seeing his GP for a PSA test. One thing that did differ was the biopsy story…Steve had a local anaesthetic and boy did he seem upset when I told him that they had knocked me out for mine. Sorry Steve!

Day 2 was a little more eventful. Mr Jones had been told that they had found more cancer when they had done surgery and he would need to go up to Birmingham for more treatment. Not sure if he was too impacted by that news, he was very ‘what will be will be’ and quite happily filled in the menu card for his lunch/dinner options straight after the consultant left. Loving your priorities there Mr Jones!

Now Steve had a bit of a set back. At this stage Steve and I were still proudly sporting our catheters, no toilet trips for us! And at one one point that afternoon:

Steve: “Mark, my bladder is a bit sore”

My Brain: “Not shit Sherlock, you have had Dr Akhtar attack it with a needle and thread recently”

Me: “Oh”

Steve: “Oh god, that hurts. Fuck me that hurts. Aggghhh!”

My Brain: “Shit, fuck, shit. Where is my red button thingy”

Me: “Steve, I have called for the nurse. Hold in there”

Now Steve has been on active duty, seen a few things in his lifetime and served for his Queen and country without batting an eyelid. At this moment in time the air was a deep shade of blue with the words that Steve was literally screaming out (some I am sure must have been French!). The nurses ran in and closed his curtain. At this stage I was pacing back and forth looking at my own catheter bag and listening to what they were saying to him.

Nurse: “There is a blockage in your tube Steve, lets get that cleared for you”

Steve: “$***, £*$£, $@£! (you get the gist)”

It was at this point that I looked at my bag a little more closely and thought, ‘I have been drinking loads today and my piss bag is still empty…oh shit, what if my pee pee tube is blocked? I don’t want pain like that, I bloody hate pain’. I started pacing my cubicle area trying to listen in to what was happening to Steve, all the while thinking that I would start to feel that pain as well:

Steve: “Thank god for that, that’s it. Better thanks nurse”

Thank god, he survived!

Me: “Excuse me nurse, my bag is empty and I have been doing as you have told me drinking loads and…”

As she looked at my bag she said, "‘yep let’s get that checked for you’. She headed off down the ward and came back with a needle and some saline to flush the tube out. Now that saline hitting my bladder actually felt quite nice, wouldn’t say no to that sensation again anytime soon, and out came a load of ‘stuff’. That is all that I could call it…’stuff’. Apparently this happens where the tube gets blocked because there has been so much going on in that the area, bits of your insides get stuck in the tube. Who knew? I didn’t till that day.

We all survived that day, Mr Jones had his food of choice, Steve looked a lot happier now that his bladder was flowing freely again and that he had his drain tube (it sort of sticks out of the body near where the surgery has happened to remove any excess fluid) removed. I on the other the hand was still sporting my drain tube whilst filling the bag quite a few times during the day, catheter still dangling proudly from the end of my penis and had still yet to poo.

Nurse: “You will need to poo before we let you go home”

Text message to Louise; ‘Can you please bring me prune juice. I need to get things moving or else they are going to keep me in here forever’

I am not going to go into the detail here, all I am going to share is that if you find yourself in the same dilemma as myself…2 litres of prune juice. Sorted.

Day 3 arrived and all of us on the ward were looking to be discharged for good behaviour (I also think that they wanted the beds back ready for the next set of unsuspecting victims), so with bag packed, a small mountain of tablets prescribed and with my drain/catheter still attached to my body I was released back into the wild.

There was nothing than I wanted more than to just get home and put this episode of my life behind me, start rebuilding my body and my mental health. The journey home was a mix of excitement of me heading home, anxiety as I still had tubes sticking out of various parts of me and also the occasional pain (I have found out that there are more potholes in the UK then there are cups of teas drank in a year!).

The journey is not over yet, I found that this is really just the end of one episode ready for me to start my next…head on over to my next post “This might tug a bit”

If you need more support then there are some great charities ready to help:

United Kingdom: https://prostatecanceruk.org

United States: https://www.pcf.org