Well the operation, it was a very long operation, I think, I was told by my consultant that it would be, maybe two to three hours, but as it turned out it was a much longer operation than, I think it was maybe about five or six hours, but obviously I wasn’t (brief laugh) I wasn’t conscious for the operation so I don’t know if there was any complications, but I know from my wife, I mean she was waiting for me when I came out, she was waiting a long time, and obviously thought something might have gone wrong, but yeah, the operation seemed pretty straight forward, and yeah, it was a little bit of discomfort, not really a lot of pain, so I think that was the easy part of the treatment, was the operation, yeah you don’t think it at the time because you haven’t experienced the recovery, but to me, that was the easiest part, I think the recovery period and things you have to go through after that, was much more difficult.

So, the immediate recovery, what was it like then?

The immediate recovery, because you have a catheter, you’ve got a catheter to pass urine, so you have to, you’ve got this bag strapped to your leg all the time, and then when you’re released from the hospital you’ve still got that, and you have to change the bag and keep it clean, you’re not able to lie down and sleep initially because the cut is a, sort of, where your abdominal muscles are, so you’re not able to lie down flat, so for the first, maybe three, three weeks or so, I was having to sleep in the front room sitting up, because you just can’t lie down, so that was uncomfortable, having to keep changing the bag, that was uncomfortable, just having the catheter in, full stop, was uncomfortable, showering with it, very uncomfortable, and then you have to go back and they do a test to see if they’re able to remove it, if the surgery with your bladder, if that had been healed, and then they’ll remove the catheter. Once it was removed, thenyou have to learn to sort of pass water yourself, which you don’t, you don’t even think about, so you have to do that and there’s a lot of leakage, a lot of incontinence, so you have to wear a pad, which again, very uncomfortable for a guy, you can’t travel long distances because sometimes, you don’t even realise, you know, the pad is getting wet, because you don’t realise that you’re leaking, because you can go to, you’ll got to the toilet and you finish, and then you’ll be sitting down and you don’t realise you’re still leaking, so you have to do like pelvic floor exercises like pregnant women do, to get control of your bladder back, so that was very uncomfortable and that must have taken about two to three weeks to get control of my bladder back so that I could pass urine and then stop passing urine and for it to, no leakage, and not wear pads anymore, so that was a very hard part of the process, and then after that, I think the erectile dysfunction was the, yeah, was the biggest problem, after that.

I went into, I went into hospital for the operation, of course I was anaesthetised, and I went down to the theatre. They make an incision from the naval down to the bottom of your stomach to operate and they remove the prostate and also they remove the seminal gland which is part of the prostate and I was in the operating theatre for about 5 hours I believe. I woke up in intensive care,I didn’t know much about it but I felt fine, I had no problems at all but I had a lot of tubes sticking out of my arms. I had epidurals for the pain, I had a catheter fitted so I had tubes down there. I had quite a few tubes, I was on a drip and I was in intensive care for the night. The nurse – and I shall never forget because I was quite awake – kept calling in every hour to check up on me and I kept smiling at her and then they took me back to the ward the next day.

The first person that came into the ward was the physiotherapist and she said “Right let’s be having you out of bed”, and at this stage after having major surgery I was frightened to get out of bed. There were tubes everywhere and I was frightened to do any damage to those. Anyway,she said “Come on let’s be having you.” So I rolled out of bed,and she said, “I want you to sit in that chair,” so I sat in the chair and she reassured me “You’ll be alright,” and went. So I sat in the chair for about 10, 15 minutes, felt a bit shaky, got back into bed and I thought well that’s not bad. And then nurse brought me soap and water, I freshened myself up and then I just progressed from there. I must add at this stage I was still on liquids only, nil by mouth, I wasn’t allowed to eat and I wasn’t allowed to eat for a four days because of the operation.

Food never worried me at all, I was just happy to be where I was happy knowing that I’d had the operation so that’s how they explained it to me. Theres probably a more technical term but they said the stomach goes to sleep, as soon as you touch it and we get no response out of your stomach for 3 or 4 days.

I had no problems at all with the catheter. I was aware of it – I was aware of them changing the bag every now and again, but there was no discomfort. The biggest discomfort after the operation is going to the toilet, but this was after 3 or 4 days later, after which the bowel or the stomach wakes up. I had a bit of a fright then when I went to the toilet and the nurse explained to me “You shouldn’t have tried to go to the toilet, you should have left it”. But when you haven’t been to the toilet you’ve just got it in your mind “Well I should have to go now”. And she was saying “Theres nothing there for you to go”, and all I did was I make it worse really because I caused bleeding. I thought “Oh what have I done?” But it was nothing, it was just I should have listened, I shouldn’t have gone really.

The strain made me bleed and of course with the catheter there I thought something had happened with the tube and I got a little bit of a panic. But when it was explained to me again I was alright. They told me this catheter was really my lifeline and they had it taped to me and they said “Whatever you do don’t pull that out, that is your lifeline because that’s replacing the tubes inside your body until such times as they heal up.”

I was supposed to have been in hospital for 14 days, that’s what they told me, after 7 days I think they were glad to get rid of me. My stomach started rumbling and that was, that went on the nurses report “I’ve had a rumble, I’ve had a rumble, my stomach’s waking up,” so they started me after the fourth day on food. And it was at this stage, once I went onto solids I just had it into my mind that I should have to go to the toilet. I think I just thought well if I’ve eaten so

As far as the operation itself was concerned I was in hospital 6 days. It was pretty straight forward, I obviously had some discomfort. If I had been in severe pain then they gave you a morphine facility which is self regulated in so far as if you feel that you’re in too much pain then you press a button and you get a small injection automatically, a small injection of morphine, obviously it is controlled so that you can’t give yourself an overdose. Er but the other awkward thing I think initially was the catheter which is really a device to keep draining your bladder until your prostate recovers, till the area round where the surgery has taken place begins to recover. You get used to that within a day, especially if you’re in a ward where there are only prostate cancer patients, they’re all walking around with catheters, it’s just the norm, there are quite a few jokes about which I probably won’t repeat on this (laughs).

The operation itself was… I had it done through the abdomen, radical prostatectomy is now carried out and I’m bound to get the word wrong but I can’t think of the word perennial, no not perennial no that’s the wrong word.

Perineum?

Perineum correct thank you, through the perineum area and I can’t speak on that because I have no experience at all, as I say my operation was done through the abdomen. And you were told quite clearly that you would be 2 days in intensive care on leaving the theatre and that you would probably be in hospital for something like 6 to 7 days. The anaesthetist was absolutely excellent, following the operation he guaranteed that I would feel no pain and he was absolutely right. He implanted an epidural pretty soon after I came round from the anaesthetic and I can honestly say I had no physical pain at all. There’s a certain amount of discomfort of course that you are again fitted with catheters and you’ve got drips going into your back of your hand and also, or into your wrist and also blood transfusions. These are just a nuisance more than a painful thing. You’re pumped fill of antibiotics because they do not wish you to have any infection in the area of the wound because it is a fairly large cut that is made through that abdomen and it was done across the abdomen not as I believe some cases up and down. On leaving hospital I came home, this time I’m absolutely certain with a catheter in and I was incontinent which of course would be the case with the catheter anyway. But after 3 weeks you had to go back and have the catheter removed and I remained incontinent with the catheter out. Now this is the most difficult period of the operation, some people I am informed are lucky the catheter is removed and they’re immediately functioning properly, others I’m informed can go on for a year still being incontinent.

There’s not much else I can say about the operation itself, per se or the follow up except that I had a little bit of difficulty in the outcome, in that the doctor came round one day and as it happened I was lying on the bed, with the blanket over me, he was quite startled by the fact that within days of the operation I was wandering around the hospital, albeit quite painfully, but I couldn’t sit still, didn’t want to sit still, couldn’t lie on a bed, didn’t want to sit on a chair, I was happy enough just wandering, but this particular day, I was, I had a blanket over me, which he didn’t actually react to initially, until a nurse went past and I said, Nurse can I have that extra blanket please, I’m freezing, he reacted immediately, and it turned out I had MRSA, so I did, so, we had a few problems clearing that up as well. I hadn’t a particularly virulent form, it just made it a little bit more difficult for things to clear up per se. Recovery, no particular problems with the recovery and the usual problems that you have post-operative, incontinence and all the rest of it, all cleared up as quickly as can be expected.