Any guy who is in for visits to the urologist needs to be aware: everyone wants to stick their fingers up your butt. Don’t be surprised if you have to do that at check-in, or for valet parking. This is some kind of secret handshake among urologists. I made a mental note to avoid urology conferences and conventions.
My biopsy results came back positive for prostate cancer, but the MRI results show that it has not spread outside the prostate, or to local lymph nodes. I learned this after many secret handshakes. Surgery seems best for long-term freedom from prostate cancer, but actually I have decided to have my prostate removed just to keep my butt free of inquisitive medical fingers.
My original urologist, who performed the biopsy, insisted I read Prostate and Cancer before we had The Talk. That was an excellent preparation for the next phase, Treatment. He proposed an aggressive cancer treatment of surgery that involved removal of the nearest nerves and all the lymph nodes. I got a second opinion at the closest university hospital, which proposed a less aggressive surgical treatment that left the nerves and lymph nodes intact, unless, of course, things looked different once they were cruising around in 3D inside my abdominal cavity.
For other geologists who don’t think much about anatomy, the nerves in question control arousal and sexual response.
So it seems that everyone I meet wants to discuss my erections. Never in my life have I discussed my stiffies with so many strangers! I filled out a questionnaire on my erections. I discussed my erections with nurses. I discussed them with Residents. I discussed them with the doctor. On my pre-op visit I was assigned a lovely, strapping Physician’s Assistant from the Rockies. She spared me the secret handshake but she want to talk erections, too. An intelligent and accomplished woman who is taller than I am generally leaves me slack-jawed and ga-ga with admiration, but I was too surprised to provide an example at short notice to a woman I had just met. So much for empiricism…
In the name of informed consent, everyone tends to make certain you are aware of the consequences of prostate removal. This only served to bring out the smartass in me, but I managed to keep my mouth shut everywhere except in my head. My P.A:
You are down for radical prostatectomy and removal of seminal vesicles.
Radical? Like terrorist? You’re radicalizing my prostate? Can’t we just do Jaeger bombs instead?
You need to be aware that after this surgery you will not be able to father children.
I’ll knock up as many women as I can before surgery.
After surgery, orgasm will no longer be accompanied by the release of fluids.
My wife’s looking forward to that, actually.
And even with nerve sparing surgery, your erections will probably take a hit.
Nooooow I’m uncomfortable. Any sort of talk about hitting my erection…
And you will be incontinent to a degree that’s unpredictable for you, but here are the stats…
Yeah, there’s incontinence. My surgeon prefers what is called a suprapubic catheter in these surgeries. The usual Foley catheter comes out your urethra (a hose within a hose), but the suprapubic catheter comes out the abdomen and doesn’t stretch the sphincter muscle of your bladder. This leads to “improved surgical outcomes,” meaning less time wetting my pants. I was looking forward to the Foley catheter, because it seems like just the thing for all those boring-ass committee meetings I have to sit through. But the one that exits through my superpubic region means that I can pee without unzipping or dropping my pants.
What freedom! To mark your territory anywhere without going to jail! And the possibilities for practical jokes are endless. If you get a long enough tube, you could run it up your shirt and out your sleeve. You could wet somebody else’s pants instead of your own! You could pee in friends’ houseplants and blame their cats! The cat that peed in your guitar case would be in for serious payback. You could mark a mugger! If you were stuck next to an annoying relative at the holiday dinners, you could pee in their glass! You can readily imagine how the combination of a catheter and narcotic painkillers might not be a good one.
Then there is what is politely called erectile dysfunction, ED or Mr. ED. My regular family nurse practitioner was the one who sent me to the university hospital, because that’s where her husband went. I was dying to ask about surgical outcomes (I’m getting good with these euphemisms). I have seen Jan for a long time, through many a problem, but asking about her husband’s boners still seemed a bit out of bounds. She beat me to it (no pun intended), by offering that he had suffered no problems with Mr. ED. Another friend who had the surgery in his forties offered that Viagra was prescribed after surgery to help keep things in working order during recovery. He still ordered it in bulk from Canada- 200 at a time for $1 each. Dude! You can take your wife out to eat once in a while! At the marathon erection confab, my university urologist agreed, Viagra was part of the rehab. And he said with an evil smile, “And we rehab aggressively.”
The evil smile clinched it. Surgery is 19 December 2014.
I’m just worried that once they take it out, they’re going to discover it’s just callouses from years of long-distance bicycling, not cancer. Damn little bitty bicycle seats.
drsledge 