Dancin' with Mr. C: And the Band Begins to Play
©2017 by Lee
Frederick Somerstein
A friend asked me today, “Do you still have that same
attitude about your prostate cancer?” I said, “Read my Hat!”
(AUTHOR’S NOTE: Please
take note of my surgery date referenced below. On that date please gather
around your radio’s, TVs, mobile devices, places of worship or anywhere else
and crank up The Beach Boys "Good Vibrations." I am grateful for all of
you.)
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The Dance is about
to begin; the orchestra is tuning up. I feel my anxiety levels rising. I will
stop to consider these feelings after the next few events.
This week I met my
surgeon. He is my urodoc’s[1]
partner and an ace at robotic surgery, which is the first option. Dr. Surgeon is in his early 50s, blondish
hair, has a surfer’s suntan, is devilishly handsome and sports a build chiseled
out of cinder blocks. I hate him!
He studied at Johns
Hopkins University and The Mayo Clinic – pretty decent creds. He’s performed
more than 1,000 robotic surgeries. I trust him, especially after he dropped the
best one-liner in the meeting.
In 1980, Dr.
Surgeon's brother was in Seattle before The Olympic, the Grand Olde Dame of Seattle
Hotels, received a long-overdue restoration/renovation. I lived in Seattle at
the time and remarked to Dr. Surgeon, “I was there over the years. Before the
renovation, all the high priced hookers conducted their marketing and sales
from the Olympic’s Lobby.”
Without pausing a
beat, Dr. Surgeon replied, “I know. I have a brother-in-law. He married one of ‘em!” I like him!
So, back to the
matter at hand, it’s called robotic surgery because the doc sits at a console and
inserts those gifted hands into a pair of manipulation gloves through which
he controls a tiny scope and the appropriate instrument. He has a close-up real
time view of the surgery. “I’ve seen things anatomically on this monitor that I
never saw using traditional laparoscope techniques,” he told me.
There might be one
hang-up. I had a previous abdominal surgery that went very badly south (Link
to Blog Post) and there is scar tissue in the area. “If I don’t have enough
room to manipulate the scope and the instrument, we go to Plan B,” Dr. Surgeon
said, “that would be to do it the ‘old fashioned’ way, with the standard abdominal
incision. In that case it will be a three-day, instead of a one-day, stay and a
longer recovery. I won’t know until I get in there with the scope.”
I feel the anxiety
uptick a few notches as The Boss and I leave the doc’s office.
The next day it’s
my one-hour pre-op appointment at the hospital, blood work, EKG and a long chat
with a nurse. She went over everything,
including the very nasty bowel prep the day before and the return of the
dreaded catheter for at least 10-days. AAAaaaarrrggghhh.
As The Boss and I
leave the hospital, the anxiety is up another notch and I hear the band begin
to play the overture. The Dance is about
to begin (4/25). It’s time to investigate my anxieties.
First of all, it’s
only natural to feel anxious before any surgery, especially major cancer
surgery. I will deal with that. But, what I wanted to know is if the anxiety is
fear-based and, the answer is no as far as I can tell. I’m certain it’s there,
around the edges, but the predominant feeling is, “Let’s get this party
started.”
In other words,
bring it (Read my hat!)!
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