Hopes & Fears

Up until now I've stayed mainly factual, but my surgery is in a few days so I wanted to get down some of the hopes & fears that I have in the leadup. One of the hard bits is that the outcomes are so variable and it depends who you talk to and when. For example you can read that 'it's safe to return to non-physical work after two weeks' but also 'it could take a few months to regain bladder control' or 'avoid any heavy lifting, yardwork or strenuous exercise for 12 weeks'. But from what I have read - 

  • Best case is getting home after one night in hospital, being relatively active (with caution) after a couple of weeks and back on a bike after 6-8 weeks. There will still be potential for bladder leakage so I'll need to wear pads if I'm out or stand in a bucket if I'm working from home. Erections won't be happening for a month or two even with the best case scenarios. 

  • Worst case is 6-12 months to regain continence and no erections again. 

(I'm excluding the 'die on the table / get a hospital infection' type scenarios as they're relevant regardless of the operation). 

That range makes it very difficult to know what to expect. On one hand I am having a surgery with a few weeks of uncomfortable recovery time, on the other I may never be able to go out in public without wearing incontinence pants again. 

I have heard that the results are skewed more towards the worst case because prostate cancer is more of an 'old person' thing. The prostate cancer charities & support organisations are aimed more at people of a certain age and often run by gerontologists (ageing experts) and also the cancers themselves are often not discovered until after they have spread beyond the prostate, which is in part why I am writing this. 

The whole concept of cancer is odd too - sometimes it feels overly dramatic, other times it's downright terrifying. Yes I am theoretically a 'cancer patient', but I can ride a singlespeed mountain bike up & down hills for 20km around the local bushland and keep up with my geared friends. Once the prostate is gone am I still a cancer patient? Have I 'beaten cancer'? Or have I just had something taken out and had a few weeks of inconvenience? I have a good friend who is in remission from liver cancer after a few years of fighting hard and HE is inspirational. I'm just undergoing a procedure that's hopefully not much worse than my varicose vein surgery. 

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