Post-Op: Month one, week two, day two

Good news from my first visit to a new primary care doc -- Dr. Jon Kucera at the Northwest Buffalo Neighborhood Health Clinic, who is health proxy Bill Finkelstein's doc. My vital signs are all good. And some not so good news. After comparing my EKGs from December and April, which is what revealed that I'd had a heart attack, he said I should be on statins. 

Now I've resisted suggestions of statins for several years. I'm leery of the side effects (Monica's old boss was hospitalized by those side effects) and because they just seem like too much of an article of faith in the medical community. One of these days, they'll discover that they're actually harmful, like Tylenol. Nevertheless, us heart attack survivors are at high risk for a repeat episode, so if anybody should be popping a statin, it's somebody like me, a point driven home during the conversation about statins on "On Point" on NPR this morning. Like it or not, it looks like Lipitor ahead after the next visit to the cardiologist. 

Meanwhile, I seem to be gaining stamina. Wednesday began with an hour of cloudy, cool-weather weeding (the big Buffalo Garden Walk is a little more than a week away) and ended at the Sportsmen's Tavern with a rollicking show by Rosie Flores, the Rockabilly Filly, who I know from the days when I was going to the South by Southwest music conference every year in Austin. What's more, she still recognizes me. "You're so cute," she said.

Thursday, which also started cool, began with another hour of weeding, this time in the shade, (front yard is starting to look pretty good), followed by a visit to opening day of the annual Italian Festival in North Buffalo. Then, after a much-needed nap, it was off to the weekly free concert (the Buffalo Philharmonic playing Stevie Wonder songs) at Canalside downtown, which gave Traci, my niece visiting from Phoenix, a look at our revitalized waterfront. Big crowd. We all took lots of photos. Attached is a pic of Traci in the one of the Canalside attractions -- the giant Adirondack chair.

Post-Op: One month, one week, two days

   The good news is that I seem to be getting stronger. Today, Thursday, July 9, I drove outside the city limits for the first time since the surgery, a 20-minute trek through the rain to the Airport Bridge Club for my first visit to the bridge tables in, well, one month, one week and three days. 
    More good news there. Paired with Jean Macdonald, a capable player whose plans to play golf had been scotched by the weather, we came in first North-South with a 59.58% game. 
    But that was about all I could manage. I came home and fell asleep while waiting for a friend to arrive with Chinese food for a late lunch, then fell asleep again later watching Seinfeld reruns on TBS. I've still got a way to go.
   The bad news is I'm still looking for leakproofing on my urostomy bag. Sunday night and Monday night I awakened wet at 5 a.m. and had to apply a new appliance.
   Wednesday found me and health proxy Bill Finkelstein back at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, talking with an ostomy nurse who had a few suggestions about alternate appliance configurations, where to place the overnight catheter bag (not on the floor) and sleeping on my left side. Wednesday night was dry. Here's hoping for two in a row.

Post-Op: One month

   Yes, it was Wednesday, June 3, when I checked in to Roswell Park Cancer Institute for the surgery that removed a Stage 2-B cancerous bladder, a prostate gland that was 10% cancerous and a pair of lymph nodes that happened to be hanging around nearby.
   It's been a bumpy month of recovery, what with nine days in the hospital and adventures with dehydration, low blood pressure, blood in the urostomy bag and leakage from one of the incisions. Nevertheless, my surgeon, Dr. Guru, believes that I am now cancer-free and, for the past week or so, it seems like those bothersome complications are behind me. Excuse me for a moment while I knock on wood.
   Today, Friday, the visiting nurse, Maria, took a look at the incisions and said the scabs were healing well. Everything else seems to be proceeding as it should. The fatigue even seems to be subsiding, albeit ever so slowly. I can walk up to eight blocks now. But then that's my limit. And I still need naps.
   I'm also champing at the bit to do some gardening. But during the past hour, while Monica was mowing the lawn, I was reminded of one of my other limits -- the five-pound lifting limit. While seated and pulling weeds out of some of the many small pots on my flat garage roof, I felt a pain in my lower right abdomen after I moved the heaviest of the pots, which may have weighed as much as 10 pounds. The pain is gone now, but I have new respect for that five-pound limit. I don't want to feel that again.