Tuesday Nov 5th.

I couldn’t eat or drink anything on Tuesday; I had an oatmeal cookie at midnight last night, my last meal as a free man. Got to the hospital at noon, with surgery scheduled for 2pm, and made it to my pre-op room by 1:30. The cookie has long since faded away; I’m chewing my fingernails for nourishment. It’s been 14 hours since eating now. Can’t a person die from not eating 14 hours?

Nurse Nelson comes in with a smallish looking gown and some socks with little treads on them, in case I go off-road and need more traction. She said strip off everything, and put on the gown, socks, and the hair net, and I’ll be back. “Everything?” I said….”when you say everything …you don’t really mean everything…” Every stitch, she says with a twinkle in her eye.

Then a parade of surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, residents, doctors. One of these days I should learn the difference between interns, residents, doctors and such. Like I’m going to remember all of these people. Some I would see again, others not. It would be nice if they’d tell me then that they’d be involved in my recovery or if they were just in and out that day.

Off to surgery. I remember moving myself onto the operating room table, but I don’t remember anything past that, not even counting backwards from 100, though I’m told I did an excellent job with that.

5:15, starting to wake up in recovery, people are milling about, but it’s a large room with other patients, lots of different colored scrubs. The scrub color tells something important, like on the Starship Enterprise where they were red or blue or gold. Here they are light blue, turquoise, fuscia, and the really cool people get to wear white coats over them. I’m very groggy, trying to wake up, and I hear somebody say 5:15. I think of my poor wife sitting in a waiting room for 3 hours now, so I try to wake up better, that’s it, wake up now. Zzzzzzzzzzzz. Lost that battle, try again. While I was asleep, someone took a wire brush and scraped out the inside of my throat for me so it would be nice and dry and sore when I woke up. “ice chips”, were my first words post-op. They gave me a couple. Zzzzzzzzzzz. So groggy, like my dad was after his surgery, just not able to wake up. Not a good feeling. They moved me up to my room, and Angela got there within minutes. I was so glad to see her and her smile.

She had talked to the surgeon after surgery. He said when I was inflated, my heart slowed down, which is a frequent side effect, happens in about a third of the patients he said. They gave me some medicine which boosted the heart rate, and were able to continue. The band placement was fine, and he fixed a small hiatal hernia with a couple of stitches. I didn’t know I had it, but I guess it’s gone now.

8pm. No food, no thoughts of food, no interest in food, which is good because they aren’t giving me any. Throat is a raw open wound. They are giving me 1 ounce of ice chips every 8 hours. 1 ounce of ice chips is roughly half of a Dixie cup. You can imagine that doesn’t last very long. Lots of shoulder pain. I had heard about this on the forums, so I expected it. They weren’t kidding though, hurts like a … Ok, let’s take a walk. That should help. I made it all the way from my bed to the door of the room and back. Probably 15 steps total. Luckily I had my socks with the deep all-season tread. Didn’t do much for the shoulder pain, but made me almost pass out.

By 10pm they kicked Angela out, I was sorry to see her go, she’s such a comfort to me. Nurse came in and said I needed to urinate, since I hadn’t gone since the morning. I gave it a try…nothing. It was like they removed that whole system while they were in there poking around. No urges, no feeling full, not able to force anything out. By 11pm they are threatening me with bodily harm if I don’t produce some urine. I try some more, I still have no urinary tract. They tell me that the catheter is coming if I can’t go like a big boy all by myself. A walk! That’s what I need, so I grabbed a nurse and did a lap around the 7th floor. After returning, I tried again, pushing and straining. Thinking of Niagara Falls. Thinking of finding a tree while camping after downing 6 beers. Trying to push but not rip out my own stitches….. and got out 150 ML. Not good enough, Joe, not nearly good enough. They scanned me and said I had 893 ML, and when you get that full, the ability to go naturally declines fast, so they brought out the catheter.

The one they had for me was 3 feet long, with a special diamond-tipped drill-bit end which effectively bored a new hole through my prostate. “Don’t fight it” the nurse called cheerfully from the business end of the bed, “we’re almost there”, while I see her snaking yard after yard of tubing where tubing isn’t supposed to go. Finally, she tells me the balloon end has been inflated to keep it in place overnight. Oh joy.

Midnight, and so now its time to sleep. I have this burning feeling in my nether regions, a torso that feels achy and tender, a dry raspy throat, my roommate’s tv flickering through the curtain, nurses that need bp, temp, pulse – oxygen readings every 30 minutes, an oxygen line under my nose that is supposed to help, but is a constant irritant, and I’m supposed to sleep.

Around 4am the hospital staff completed a critical slam test of all doors and cupboards in the supply room located conveniently just outside my room.

More ice? More ice you say? You’ve had your 1 ounce of ice, you can have some more at 8am. Swallowing is no longer an option for me.