Well I got my staples out. The waiting room was filled with grumpy old people and some woman across from me was quite vociferous (he ran 90 minutes behind). When I got in the nurse asked me how I was and from her body language she was braced for another complaint. When I said, "Great!" she heaved a big sigh, I laughed and told her the waiting room needed to be sprayed with Prozac. She said, "yeah, they take it out on us." I thought of giving some advice like telling people how far behind you're running but figured if you could run a prostatectomy through remote control, surely you could reason that out. Then the same nurse took out my staples which stung. She asked how she was doing and I said fine. She told me it was her first time. "Really?" I asked. "No, just kidding," she said. First humor in a pretty long time on the medical scene (wait until my next post and you'll see how grim it got).
Dr. Hatcher went over my path report. More info for those readers with prostates: my biopsies which were in 4 quadrants only showed cancer on one side/lobe but the pathology report on the removed gland showed cancer on both sides/lobes, involving 20% of the prostate. Gleason score still 3/4 but tumor stage went to 2C. Just shows how lucky I was. Still am ok, no PSA followup until October.
I tried to get him to remove my catheter but no such luck. He asked if I wanted to do it myself and I thought of the brokerage commercial where the surgeon tells the guy with the steak knife to make an incision between the 3rd and 4th abdominal muscles and asked, "Shouldn't you be doing that?" So I go back in 6 days to have this dadgum thing removed. My step-daughter Christy (an RN) offered to do it. Said I could cover up. I told her if something (unlikely) went wrong like dragging some alien spider out or a turtle clamped down on the end of the catheter, I'd rather be in the doc's office. She seemed not to take too much offense. More later...
Lane
