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.