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.
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