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    Prostatectomy
    Prostatectomy
    Prostatectomy
    Ebook119 pages44 minutes

    Prostatectomy

    By Ian G Dalziel

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Men often learn that they may have prostate cancer after a routine blood test shows an increased level of something called Prostate Specific Antigen, or PSA. If this is happening to you, then you are starting on a long and complicated journey, as you try to deal with this illness.
    More tests, and biopsies perhaps, will be needed to confirm the presence of any cancer and its level of seriousness. You will then be bombarded with much medical information, plus a menu of various possible treatment methods. This isn’t just like fixing a broken leg; you will have to weigh the risks and benefits the of different options, and then make your own decisions.
    I wrote this short book because I saw nothing quite like it when I was going through my own ordeal. Now, eight years after my prostatectomy, I wanted to let other men know what it felt like for me to go through the whole experience, why I chose surgery, and what happened during and after the operation.
    So, this isn’t a medical book. You won’t find charts, diagrams, or survival percentages. But I hope that you will learn enough to feel more confident in making your personal decisions. And I wish you the very best.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIan G Dalziel
    Release dateFeb 26, 2016
    ISBN9781311013644
    Prostatectomy

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      Book preview

      Prostatectomy - Ian G Dalziel

      Prostatectomy

      One Patient’s Experience

      IAN G. DALZIEL

      Copyright © 2016, 2017 by Ian G. Dalziel

      Smashwords Edition.

      First edition 2016.

      Second edition 2017.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

      Other Works by Ian G. Dalziel:

      *

      Fiction:

      Princess of the Allevanti

      She Dyed for Love

      The Kashmir Shrine

      Contact in Nevada

      Non-Fiction:

      The Curious Evolution of Christianity

      *

      Cover image based on Medical team performing operation (41331167), by morganka © 123RF.com.

      To the doctors who treated me, the nurses who cared for me, and to my wife who has always been there for me.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      PSA? What’s That?

      The Urologist Speaks

      The Joys of the Biopsy

      Breaking News. And It Wasn’t Good

      Don’t You Guys Have a Cure for This?

      What If I Do Nothing?

      Radiation? The External Kind

      Internal Radiation

      Hot or Cold Treatments?

      Hormone Therapy?

      Chemotherapy?

      Making My Decision

      Oopsies & Nasties

      How a Prostatectomy Is Performed

      Two Types of Prostatectomy

      Pre-Op Consultation

      Day of Surgery

      The Operation

      The Resurrection

      Home, Sweet Home

      Catheter Maintenance

      Catheter Removal

      Pathology Results

      Diapers at Work

      A Word About Sex

      Closing Thoughts

      Wherever the art of Medicine is loved,

      there is also a love of Humanity.

      ~ Hippocrates

      Introduction

      What you will be able to read in this book is how it felt for me to go through the whole process of dealing with my prostate cancer, from the initial detection, through my surgery, to now, eight years later. You’ll follow along as I stumbled through the experience, trying to understand my situation, and hoping to make good decisions.

      I am not a doctor, nor do I have any medical knowledge, so I’m not able to provide any specific medical guidance. There will be no charts, no statistics, no diagrams, and no details of cancer survival rates. Those data are readily available to you on a variety of web sites. Besides, the data seem to change every year, as the medical profession continues to learn more about prostate cancer.

      Does my perspective as a patient have value for you? I’d like to think so. You see, I had been happily sailing along, oblivious to this disease, only to have it crash into my life without any warning at all, and to have it occupy much of my waking thoughts for a considerable time. That’s pretty much this cancer’s standard modus operandi.

      However, when figuring out what to do, you quickly find out that prostate cancer is an unusual disease, in that there is a variety of ways to treat it. I will touch on most of them in this book.

      As it happens, I chose to go with prostatectomy, and I will explain why I did that later in the book. Much of what you will read here is about what I went through before, during and after my prostatectomy surgery.

      Your own doctors will be able to lay out for you all the currently available options, and will probably provide you with a bag full of brochures and booklets, together with a list of websites to browse. Making your personal decision will be difficult, and will absorb much of your time, digesting the information and weighing pros and cons.

      I wrote this small book because I saw nothing like it when I was doing my own analysis. It would have been most useful to have something in my hands that would tell me what it feels like to go through the entire experience of dealing with this cancer, and having the surgery. My hope is that reading this book will help you navigate the waters of your own journey, stage by stage.

      Enough preamble. Let me begin my story by taking you into my family doctor’s office, back in 2006.

      PSA? What’s That?

      It began late in 2006, in a very unexciting way. I recall being with my family doctor at his clinic, going through my annual physical.

      I don’t remember exactly what was done on that occasion, but it would have been the usual routine. Poking into my ears, peering into my eyes and up my nostrils. That nice shiny hammer they all use was certainly tapped at my knees to see if I had any reflexes there.

      There might have been sensors strapped to my various body parts—I’m not sure, since they don’t seem to do that every year. But there was a discussion of my general health, my diet, my weight, and so on. And, at some point in the proceedings, that delightful examination that only males get to enjoy: that of the prostate.

      The prostate is located very close to the rectal passage, meaning that doctors can insert a finger in your rectum, and then quickly feel whether the prostate is enlarged, which it happens to be for as many as fifty percent of men over the age of fifty.

      That’s a condition known as benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH), in which the swollen prostate partially chokes the flow of urine. Men often learn that they have BPH after they complain to their doctors that it takes a long time to begin urinating.

      During my physical that day, my doctor found no swelling, thank goodness. So, when I was done with the various tests and discussions, I was given a sheet on which the doctor had marked the specific blood tests he wanted performed this year. There would have been the test for cholesterol, for diabetes, and others that I don’t

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