Thanks to Donny Pember for getting me in touch with his friend Mike. Mike had the da Vinci robotic surgery in February and told me how relatively easy it was, got his catheter out early in 8 days and went dancing at a wedding on day 9 which sounds good to me. He gave me lots of encouragement and nitty gritty details, said that I'd joined the group of men known as the Reluctant Fraternity. If only I could dance but I'd be willing to learn in exchange for losing the catheter early.
Connections are what nourishes us. I have read many a patient a chapter in that old best-seller Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulgum. It concerns a child hiding in a pile of leaves under his window while playing hide-and-go-seek and the others are giving up on him. He considers setting fire to the pile but just decides to yell, "Get found, kid!" He describes the grownup version, cites a physician who got cancer, decided to tell no one including his wife and family until the end. Some people said he was courageous but his family was privately very angry with him, felt betrayed. I am not advocating hiding. Tell someone. Tell a lot of someones. It comes back many-fold.
