Post-Op: 60 months, 29 days

You can't wear your own face covering into Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. At the entrance checkpoint opposite the darkened gift shop, they take your temperature electronically (96.8) and give you one of their masks, one of those pale blue ones, and ask you if you know where you're going. 

So much has been moved around and altered since I spent nine days here in 2015, I can't be sure. No longer does someone play piano in the atrium. The Tim Hortons has given way to a Spot Coffee. Nevertheless, urology is still at the back of the ground level and radiology is still one floor up. 

What's also different are the automatic door openers. Now they're touchless. In place of the ubiquitous blue push-buttons everybody whacked with their elbows or the backs of their hands, there are little glowing sensor squares, awaiting activation with a wave. 

This is my testing visit, a week ahead of my annual consultation with the genial Dr. Khurshid Guru, the man who saved my life. All this was supposed to happen back in April, but ... well, you know. 

The radiology routine hasn't changed, aside from additional attention to antiseptic practices. I ask the nurse, Colleen, if she expects that all this extra caution will continue after the current situation is over, presuming that it ever will be over, and she didn't think so. I bless her when she succeeds in finding a vein on the first poke to insert an IV connection and draw blood to check my liver function. Good news. It's functioning. 

There's no return to Roswell on the following Thursday, though. My July 2 visit will be by phone, the urology office informs me on Wednesday. And it turns out not to be Dr. Guru at all. The face on the screen is Elizabeth Fiorica, one of the nurse practitioners. 

Everything is fine, she says. I still need to ask her my big question, though. Prior to the surgery, if I recall correctly, Dr. Guru had said this would give me five years. Now that the warranty has expired, what happens? We'll be seeing you, she says, for another five years. 

Post-Op: 45 months, 2 days

In my little curtained-off waiting area in the radiology department of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center last week, it suddenly feels like 2015 again.

I’m a patient.

Everyone who steps in asks my name. And my date of birth. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I’ve been fasting all day for the CAT scan. And despite my best efforts at super-hydrating to swell my veins, finding one for the IV isn’t a slam-dunk.  

The next poke in back of my hand stings more, but at least it works. Then the injection and that familiar warm sensation. First in my nose and mouth, then in my butt.

I have no aversion to the scan – hands over my head, the slide into the machine’s doughnut hole, the instructions to hold your breath. I’m less fond of the second IV injection – the dye which highlights my internal plumbing. As I wait for a return visit to the machine, this time lying on my stomach, there’s dull pain on both sides of my lower back. The kidneys are not pleased, but they get over it.

I mention it three days later when I return to Roswell Park for a visit with the man who saved my life four years ago – Dr. Khurshid Guru, the master of robotic surgery. Back then, he said I’d have an 80% chance of living five years. Now, after nearly 80% of those five years, the tests continue to be good. I’m still cancer-free. Dr. Guru says he’ll see me again in 12 months.

Post-Op: 32 months, 12 days

          It's Thursday, Feb. 15th, and Michelle, the nurse practitioner with the 19 tattoos, is bubbling with blonde good cheer as she arrives in the examining room in the Urology Department at what recently has been renamed Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

She has the results from my visit two days earlier. The blood work that had to be redone because the first sample wouldn't test. The chest X-ray. The CT scan.

         "Would you be this cheerful if you had bad news?" my health care proxy, Bill Finkelstein, asks.

         Actually, yes, she says. But this news is good. All the blood indicators are well within their limits. Nothing showed up in the scans.

         Dr. Guru, the man who did the surgery and saved my life back in 2015, steps in a few minutes later and he's beaming, too, as he shakes our hands. Everything is fine. 

         I have a couple questions. One of them is: "See you in six months?" No, he says. It can be a year now. I'm simultaneously relieved and, well, a little disappointed. I've grown accustomed to getting reassurance every six months. Then again, hey, it's a year! I'll take it.

        

Post-Op: 18 months, 10 days

Good news. I’m still cancer free.

The official word came from my surgeon, a most jovial Dr. Khurshid Guru, late Thursday afternoon in one of those little examining rooms in the urology clinic at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

All those tests I took at Roswell Park on Tuesday came back good. Blood, X-ray, CAT scan, everything in there looks fine. Kidney function is excellent. My stoma thing is in great shape. Good cholesterol could be better, however. We’ll have to work on that from now until the next exam around the time I’m celebrating my 75th birthday six months from now. 

Post-Op: 10 months, 18 days

       “You look good,” my surgeon, Dr. Khurshid Guru, says as he appears in the examining room Thursday. I feel good, I tell him. What also looks good, he continues, is my blood work. And my CT scan. I’m still cancer free. Hallelujah! He’ll see me in six months. October.

        Meanwhile, this is my fourth day in a row at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. I’m ready to paint my name on a slot on top of the parking garage. Tuesday they drew blood (thankfully, those hard-to-find veins cooperated on the first poke) and did the CT scan (veins didn’t cooperate for the IV needle – needed a second nurse, a second poke).

The other two days were for Monica. Monday was a consult with breast surgeon #4 – Dr. Helen Cappuccino, recommended by Dr. Guru – and she said a double mastectomy was unnecessary. There are too many mastectomies, she contended. At this stage, Stage Zero, the outcome would be just as good with lumpectomies, plus radiation. Maybe better. We were incredulous. Everybody else had been saying mastectomy, mastectomy, mastectomy.

This was news that Monica had so much wanted to hear. Me, too. A great dark cloud of major surgery, reconstruction and months of recovery had suddenly been lifted. Now she would be out of work for only a few days. She could go back to swimming, playing volleyball and riding her bike. She wouldn’t have to miss the 21st annual Ride for Roswell at the end of June. She’s ridden in all 20 so far.

Wednesday we were back. First for a talk with the anesthesiologist, then on to the mammography clinic. There they inserted radioactive seeds to mark the boundaries for the surgery, a procedure that will be considerably shorter than a mastectomy. It’s an hour and a half. It’s next Tuesday. She won’t even have to stay in the hospital overnight. 

Post-Op: Six months

How surreal to think back to June, when a walk down a hospital hallway was a major effort and my internal works were still readjusting after the surgery, which was six months ago today. Now (knock on wood), I’m good.

Good for full-time weeks at The Buffalo News, where I’ve been writing a lot of obituaries. Good for bridge games five or six days a week. Good for a few beers or wines on the weekends. Good for everything except lifting more than 10 pounds, climbing more than two flights of stairs and staying up past 2 a.m. In some ways, it seems like I’m better than before. For instance, no more getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

        Sure, I’m still taking three medications for blood pressure, which seems to be under control, along with a statin and a baby aspirin for my stent-enhanced heart. But as far as the doctors are concerned, I’m cancer free and the ticker’s doing OK, at least until the next round of checkups in the spring. I wake up in the morning and say to myself, hey, I’m here. I’m grateful. Every day really is a blessing. 

Post-Op: Third month plus a week

   I thought that going back to work Tuesday after 13 weeks of extended sick leave would mean that I'm totally recovered. But it doesn't. I started getting a little ragged around the edges as I watched the 10 p.m. TV news. When the city editors suggested that I go home early, it seemed like a really good idea. 
   It turned out to be an evening of exhilaration and stress. Exhilaration at the applause with which the newsroom greeted me when I walked in shortly after 5 p.m. Joy at seeing all my colleagues again and discovering that they still thought I should continue as the Candyman. (Thanks to Barb O'Brien for providing a starter supply of sweets.) And then there was satisfaction in getting organized to once again tackle one of my primary assignments -- the Reporter's Notebook column.
   But it was not a matter of simply settling back in front of the old familiar computer screen. The massive reorganization of the newsroom had gotten to my desk, which had been packed up and moved. It took an hour to find and activate things that I didn't want to do without -- the cordless phone, the wireless mouse, the mini electric fan, the drugstore spectacles. It took another hour to do a rudimentary restoration of the settings that were lost during the installation of the new Dell laptop computer, which is attached to an outboard keyboard and display screen. It took more than one try to find out which of the copying machines was doing the printouts of my Reporter's Notebook e-mail.
   Setting up the files for Reporter's Notebook turned out to be as astute move. At 9 p.m., 45 minutes before the first edition deadline, the editors realized they did not have a column for Wednesday. I was able to whip one together and transfer it to the city desk just in time. After that, though, I was beat. Guess I've got some more recovering to do.

Post-Op: Three months

The CT scan today (Wednesday) at Roswell Park Cancer Institute confirms it. No malignancies. Cancer-free right now, and everything looks good for the future. Come back again in six months for another CT scan, says the oncologist, the dapper Dr. Saby George. CT scans every six months for three years, then once a year after that. 

The blood test looks good too. Everything within normal levels. Cholesterol is down. Liver and kidney functions are fine. The CT scan also shows the heart looking normal, Dr. George adds. Is my urostomy arrangement doing OK, he asks. I assure him that it is. I note that all we have to do now is bring that high blood pressure back to where it ought to be. Sooner or later, we'll find the right combination of meds to do the trick.

And so next Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, I go back to working nights at The Buffalo News. My long extended sick leave is over. What can I say after I say, "Hallelujah!" 

Post-Op: 2 months and 4 days

Ask me how do I feel and if I were a bell, I'd be ... the Liberty Bell. Not quite the way I came out of the casting mold, but still ringable in the right circumstances. 

I've been playing bridge regularly, to be sure, though I hit the gong there only about half the time. Gardening would be more of a bell-ringer if I could go more than 60 to 90 minutes before needing to quit. 

I wasn't up doing for our annual party during the Garden Walk July 25 and 26, either. Sitting on the shady front porch in the afternoon was more my speed. Even so, thanks to a rainy June and some help from my friends, the yard once again was at its best, except at the corner, where the concrete had been dug up for installation of a new handicapped access sidewalk. Bad timing. 

Although I'm not supposed to lift things that weigh more than 5 or 10 pounds, I managed to broom and scrape out the crappy topsoil the city installed after the new sidewalk was poured. The DPW guy in City Hall had agreed to let me handle the landscape remediation, but word apparently didn't get down to street level.  

The replumbing for my bladder, meanwhile, seems to be working fine. (I wonder, however, how long it will take for the incisions to stop being red and crusty and become just scars.) Heart issues, meanwhile, are looming as the bigger concerns at the moment. After a revision in blood pressure meds, I'm pumping numbers that stray into the danger zone. On the plus side, there don't seem to be problems with the newly-instituted statin. No side effects that I've noticed so far. If that's all there is, I'll ring another bell.

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.

Post-Op: Day 25

   "You look good. Your color is good," my surgeon, Dr. Guru, said Friday afternoon as he strolled into the examination room in the Urology Department at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. "I wish I felt as good as people say I look," I said. I'm still fatigued, I explained. I don't have enough energy to be up and doing things for more than a couple hours or so.

   This, he said, is normal. It will get better. As for the other complications -- the leaking surgical incision, the blood in the urine last Sunday -- those have stopped. And my blood work Friday, that was good. 

   The urine sample last Sunday, on the other hand, showed bacteria. Not unusual, he said, since we joined together body parts that aren't meant to go together. The section of intestine that collects the output from the kidneys still wants to act like an intestine, not a bladder, and it will have bacteria. To protect from infection and be on the safe side, he prescribed 10 days worth of Cipro.

   As for that feeling that I still have compression stockings on my toes, Dr. Guru said that also was not unusual, a leftover from the surgery, when my body was feet-up for hours. This too, he said, will pass. 

   To the doctor's amazement, neither health proxy Bill Finkelstein nor Monica had any questions. We'll see you in six weeks, he said. And after that, check-ups twice a year. Or maybe only once a year. All that's left to do is hydrate heavily, rest and recover. Wonder how long recovery road is going to be. From here, I can't yet see the end of it. 

Post-Op: Day 20

    First the stuff in the urostomy bag Sunday afternoon looks like Hawaiian punch. Then like cranberry juice. Then like dark cherry juice. I call health proxy Bill Finkelstein. Send a picture to my phone, he says. 

   Shortly after 6 p.m., just as Monica is about to put dinner on the table, Bill calls back. Get down to Roswell as soon as you can, he says. Dr. Syed is there right now. Last week there was one emergency weekend run to Ward Seven West. And now this weekend, two. I'm a little alarmed. Will I have to stay the night?

    With Monica and Bill looking on, Dr. Syed sees dark red goopy things in the bag and proposes that this may be partially clotted old blood that's decided to move out. He sticks a tube into the stoma (no feeling there ... amazing), draws out a sample of what's inside and designates it for a lab test in the morning. I'll be going home. Keep an eye on it and keep hydrating, the doctor says. Pointing to the bottle of water at my side, he adds, "That's your buddy."

    Today, Monday, the colors begin as pink grapefruit juice and evolve into lemonade. Only drama comes when I stand up abruptly from the computer this evening and catch the edge of the bag against the edge of the dining room table, separating the front of it from its adhesive backing. A quick replacement is in order. Though I can probably handle that by myself, I'm grateful I'm not home alone.

    Meanwhile, I take my longest walk since the surgery this afternoon -- 4 1/2 blocks to the M&T Bank on Elmwood Avenue and back, unaccompanied and a little tentative, picking out the shadier sides of the streets. I come home hungry and ready for a nap. 

Post-Op: Day 18

Recovery is not a straight line, my surgeon, Dr. Guru, said Thursday in Roswell Park Cancer Center, moving his hand up and down to illustrate. Seeing one of the downs before him at this first post-release examination, he declared me dehydrated and ordered an infusion of saline solution. 

So the two-hour visit went into overtime -- a morning-long IV session, with a half-hour search for a workable vein ending at the base of my right thumb. Please, I entreated the gods who look after you in situations like these during one of my gassy abdominal cramps, don't make me deal with a bowel movement while I'm hooked up. 

The IV worked. My weary voice perked up. My shuffling step was springy enough that I turned down a wheelchair and exited on my feet. Nevertheless, on Friday, when a technician was checking my sleep apnea machine to see why it was drying out my mouth all the time, he turned to me and said, "You look dehydrated."

So I have renewed my quest for fluids I can swallow in quantity. Beer doesn't count, I'm told. What a shame. I've fallen back on Vitamin Water (about to polish off my second of the day) as an alternative to just plain Poland Spring. Health proxy Bill Finkelstein bought me a mango-pineapple smoothie from McDonald's, recommended by one of the bridge players who relied on that while recovering from colon surgery. Could be a winner. It has real fruit in it and it's definitely tasty.  Recommendations, anyone?

Recording my fluid intake now, with the goal of least three quarts a day, I see all I need to do is six to eight ounces per waking hour. Doesn't sound that hard. But it is. 

Anyway, once I was hydrated, the leak revived through the small incision scab next to my navel. Coincidence? And once again, the struggle was on to patch it up and keep it from soaking me from the waist downward. 

Monica finally turned to a mini urostomy bag like the one that worked so well after Dr. Syed applied it at Roswell a week ago. But the bag caught nothing. The incision still leaked. Maria, the visiting nurse, gave it a try this morning (Saturday), using some paste to improve the seal, but again no luck. Finally, Bill set up another visit to Roswell, where a nurse on my last ward, Seven West, determined that the nearby bag collecting urine might be the culprit. Now, with two new bags, so far I'm dry. Bliss. 

Post-Op: Day 12

    Gee, but it's good to be back home, even though everywhere I look, there are things I want to clean, weed or rearrange, but can't. In the meantime, Monica has decided to thin out my wardrobe while she has the energy advantage. "Strike while the iron is weak," she told a phone caller.
    But the pleasures of home have not been without other complications, as well. Not with the basics, thank God. The urostomy is working fine. The 17 stairs to the second-floor bedroom? Not an obstacle. What to wear? T-shirts and sweatpants with elastic waistbands. No, the complications came up elsewhere:
    1. That sore left foot (Monica's diagnosis: plantar fasciitis), which inhibits walking as much as I should.
    2. Constipation (I'll resist dwelling on the delights of strawberry Milk of Magnesia).
    3. The leaky incision just left of my navel, which put Monica's talents as a teenage candy-striper to the test. To soak a succession of T-shirts, bandages, towels and improvised plastic barriers she deployed, it generally took two hours or less.
    And 4. Surprise! Low blood pressure, by-product of the switch from hospital blood pressure meds to the stronger ones at home. The visiting nurse took a reading Friday and it was fine. Had it been checked after that, I might have guessed why I felt so light-headed and listless.
    It was health proxy Bill Finkelstein's alarm at Monica's last-gasp leak treatment -- an Ace bandage around my waist with a towel tucked inside it, on top of the usual little taped-down pile of gauze -- that prompted the phone calls which took us back to Roswell Park Cancer Institute Saturday evening, to the ward I left 48 hours earlier, Seven West. One of Dr. Guru's associates, Dr. Syed, agreed to meet us there around 8 p.m.
    His solution -- a small urostomy bag to fit over the leaking incision. While we waited for one to arrive, I asked for a blood pressure reading. When it came up 71/52 and 72/51, the health care aide thought the computerized testing machine was malfunctioning, but an old-fashioned pump-up cuff yielded the same results. A few laps around the ward lifted it to 90/62.
    Meanwhile, the bag worked. Thank you, Dr. Syed. Once in place, it immediately started filling. And today, Sunday, the seepage seems to have stopped entirely. As for blood pressure, now that my blood pressure cuff at home has been located, the readings are improving, but they're still low. No more pills till they climb some more.

Post-Op: Day 9

    In a few hours, I'll be home after eight days in Roswell Park Cancer Institute, but not without a few anxieties. How will clothes go over the urine-collecting bag? What about the 17 stairs to the second-floor bedroom? And will I have another evening like last night, Wednesday?

    After room service removes the dinner plates, I notice a big wet spot on the front of my hospital gown. The collection bag, changed earlier that day by Katy, one of the ostomy nurses, must be leaking. Another bag change and a new gown, but it also gets wet. The leak isn't in the bag and it's not yellow. It's that reddish lymph fluid, coming from one of the surgery incisions, the one closest to my navel. Lots of gauze and tape are applied and I get another new gown. It works. From there on, only the gauze gets wet.

    Then, as I leave my chair for the evening to brush my teeth and go to bed, I leave a trail of liquid behind me, culminating with a big spill in the bathroom. A major mess. It's from the urine collection bag, a new model with a different kind of release valve that was sent up to us here on 7 West from supply central downstairs. The new valve clicks into the connection with the old overflow bag, but it doesn't hold. 

    The nurse, tall, blond Christie, who used to work in television -- AM Buffalo and the Channel 2 morning news show -- but went back to school to change into a career where she could get the feeling that she was helping people, applies copious amounts of tape to the connection and gets me still another new gown. It works. I doze off to Rita Hayworth's first movie, "The Outlaw," and sleep well until the morning blood draw. 

    Even though Christie ties the tightest tourniquet in Roswell Park, my elusive veins do not show themselves for her. She pokes my arm twice without success and calls for another nurse, who tries once and fails. The third nurse, who announces that she's the one they bring in for difficult cases, finds a promising prospect at the base of my right thumb and nails it. My veins and I will not miss the morning blood draw.

    Dr. Hanzly, Dr. Guru's associate, arrives for his daily visit in the 8 o'clock hour and says that, despite the leaky incision, I'm better off at home. The longer you're in the hospital, he says, the bigger chance of infection. With that, he extracts the line leading to the Jackson-Pratt Drain, which has been pulling lymph fluid out of my abdomen for eight days, and assures me I'll go home with plenty of supplies to soak things up. I'll need 'em. The former drain has been quiet, but not the incision site. It's still oozing like a basement wall in the rainy season. 

Post-op: Day 7

My surgeon, Dr. Guru, walks in with his associate about 4 p.m. today, Tuesday, hands me a stapled print-out entitled "Patient Report," points out the areas highlighted in yellow and declares that I should be pleased.

The bladder? Cancer-free, according to the lab report. The chemo and the TURBT procedures took care of it. The two nearby lymph nodes he removed? They were OK. The bladder cancer hadn't spread. No problem. The prostate gland? 10 percent cancer. It hadn't spread either. Now it's gone. Once I recover, I'm going to be fine. Healthier than before.

The next question -- when should I go home? The associate said a few days ago I could probably leave on Wednesday. Dr. Guru said he wanted to be sure that the now-pale pink fluid draining from my abdomen had decreased to acceptable levels. 

My opinion, having seen the nurses and aides empty the little grenade-shaped plastic collection bulb for the Jackson-Pratt Drain, was that I wanted to be cautious and not remove the drain too soon. My health proxy, Bill Finkelstein, had gone home with a JP Drain still in place after abdominal surgery a few years ago and was back in the hospital with an infection three days later. Fine. The drain can stay for another day. I'll go home Thursday. 

Monday's move to a smaller private room in a regular ward on the seventh floor was accompanied by my biggest parade of visitors. There was Bill, of course, and bridge players Sandi England and Jerry Geiger -- a jolly collection. All we needed was a deck of cards.

Following them were good friends Jack and Shelley Dumpert, who promised to weed my garden Tuesday (but had to postpone it due to the cold rain and fog). Then, surprise, Richard Allmond, a friend from the Lost Expedition pub crawl I led back in the 1980s. And finally, Monica and another good friend, Marti Gorman, who showed up just as I was reaching another recovery milestone -- my first bowel movement. Guess I'm almost ready to face the world again. Except for the JP Drain, all my medical missions are accomplished. 

Post-op: Day 5

How am I doing? Wrong person to ask. I'm just the patient here, with no frame of reference as to what's good or bad, aside from the fact that I hurt less than I did yesterday. And that was less than the day before. 
Still, in many ways, I can tell I'm making good progress on that road to recovery. One milestone -- passing gas. Hooray! My lower intestines are working. That was Friday afternoon. Another marker -- eating food, which off limits until I got gassy. Up to then, all I could do was wet my mouth by dipping a sponge on a stick into a glass of water. But now that I can eat, I'm not really hungry. So far I'm just doing soup, yogurt, apple juice and gelatin.
Ask Dr. Guru and his associates and they say I'm ahead of schedule. They say the surgery went well. They say I'm healing nicely (although the right side of my abdomen still kind of burns when I get up from bed or from my chair). And I'm ambulatory. I walk laps around the ward -- 6-East, the intermediate intensive care unit at Roswell Park Cancer Institute -- and I've gone down to the ground floor (by elevator) and out to the garden. Today, however, is the first time I've felt clear-headed enough to write.
Meanwhile, no problems with the urinary arrangement, although it seems very strange not have used a toilet since the surgery. Problem area instead has been the line draining a reddish Hawaiian-punch-like fluid from my abdomen. On Friday, a leak developed around the incision. The nurses finally resolved it by altering a stoma patch, like they use for the urinary opening, Right now, I'm dry.
Monday it's off to a regular ward -- 7-West -- where they won't be checking my vital signs so frequently. Nevertheless, the nurses and health care associates here on 6-East, which is nearly vacant at the moment, have been supportive and attentive, although even they have had trouble finding veins on me for drawing blood. Still, I have no complaints. When can I go home? Maybe as soon as Wednesday. It all depends on how soon they can remove that drain from my abdomen.

Surgery Diary: Day one minus one

     the trepidations crept in on me last night. after all, it's major surgery. what if i don't wake up? what if i do? what put the fears to flight finally were all the good wishes from you folks out there in the electronic ether and the hugs from my colleagues at the news monday night and my bridge-playing buddies at the tuesday game. 
     meanwhile, i got the flowers planted that i bought at mischler's over the weekend and had an evening of fun at "the book of mormon," which opened tuesday night at shea's performing arts center downtown. thanks again for all your encouragement. my proxies will provide updates for the next day or two.