Mid-week update

THANK YOU Everyone for the good vibes, hopes & prayers. They mean a lot to me. As a wise woman once said, the opposite of fear is LOVE. Reading your encouragement goes a long way to dispelling the uncertainty & fear that sometimes tries to swallow you whole.

Monday I met with my surgeon and went over the procedure. It will be about 8 hours or so. Removal of the bladder & prostate, creating a urinary diversion, re-plumbing the colon... I even have a plastic/reconstructive surgeon who will be in charge of "filling in" the space left when they take all this stuff out. If needed, they may even do a little "spot" radiation during the surgery.

They did another pelvic MRI Tuesday - I guess to have one last look to help plan everything out.

Although we have a good plan, there's still some uncertainty on exactly how the operation will go. How advanced is the cancer? Is it just by the prostate/bladder or has it spread to multiple locations? Even with the catheter in 24/7, it still sometimes backs up. Will my kidneys stay healthy enough? They've already taken a small "hit" with the "backups" over the last month or so. If my kidneys go, I am screwed. Save the kidneys! Although there are lots of questions, it would have to be something really radical to change the plan too much. Even if it has spread, I gotta pee, so that part's pretty much 100%. It will be such a relief to have that taken care of.

When I was at home, a few times a day, we let the dogs out to do their "business". Oh, how wonderful it would be, to be able to pee at will without the aid of external devices. I wish I could pee like a dog!

Anyway, that will all be fixed up in a couple days. Now I can say that I'm also an "expert" in catherization! I'm an expert in cancer surgery, chemo, radiation and now I have one more thing to add to the list! Yay.

Aside from the obvious discomfort (it's actually not too bad, once you understand how everything goes) the main thing is to get the pee out. Unfortunately, my tumor happens to be in/on my prostate/bladder and it tends to bleed. Cathing plain urine is a piece of cake. When it gets clogged up with blood, it can get tricky. We were doing "intermittent catherization" for, I guess, 3 weeks or so, and, although you have to put your mind in a different "place" during the process, I got pretty good at it. Unfortunately, the blood made it so that once you were "in" that didn't mean stuff came out. Not good. Stuff MUST come out. I'd sometimes try different designs (they have rubber, plastic, curved, big holes, little holes) with various results. I also got pretty good a "flushing" the catheter. That's when you get a syringe and flush the catheter with sterile saline. Squirt in, pull, squirt out. Squirt in, pull, squirt out. Eventually you'd get things to flow, although there were a few times I was scared I'd have to give up and go to the ER. We got it working every time though. About 2 weeks ago, it was just getting too difficult (the same tumor blocking the liquid from coming out, made it difficult to poke a tube up there 5 times a day). So, we went with the Foley catheter option. Stick it in, leave it in. Sounds awful, but it was really a relief after the "will it work" efforts 5 times a day. After each episode, the bathroom looked like the set from Dexter (Showtime - Sunday's at 8:00 pm). So the Foley is a good thing. It was even clear yellow for about a week or so. Yay, yay. On Monday, something must have popped inside, because it went red again. Still have to watch for clots and when they happen, flush them out with saline. Last night it wasn't flowing like it should have and nothing I did was working. I did get it tweaked just right at about midnight and things started (slowing) flowing. I was just about to drive myself to the ER. Fortunately, today, I met with my urologist and one of their folks gave me a "deluxe" flushing, so now I have some advanced techniques up my sleeve if it happens again in the next day or two.

Enough about that...

Tomorrow is the big "prep" day. If you've had a colonoscopy, you know what I mean! Liquid all day, dulcolax at noon, start drinking "HalfLytely" at 4:00 (drink the whole thing!) and "stay close" to a restroom. Then being admitted to the hospital early Friday. Sheila's coming out tomorrow. Yay, yay, yay. Can't wait to see her. I conferenced her in on the major appointments this week, so she's 100% up to speed. We have a house/pet sitter and Calvin is handling the Web business, so we're ready to rock & roll.

Recovery is going to be a bitch, but we're looking forward to having this "milestone" and turning the page. The journey continues...

Go team purple!!!!!!!