What is a Prostatectomy Like?

I had prostatectomy two years ago. The surgery was no problem and I recovered quickly. I had a second surgery to have a penile implant that has a tube and a pump that gives me an erection. As long as it is pumped up the erection lasts as long as I want it. I wish I had had this when I was 40!

It makes me think of Airplane where they inflate the auto pilot.

My urologist was 100% upfront with me about the side effects and recovery. He also talked about other treatment options. In fact, he all but guaranteed some measure of ED at the minimum and certain incontinence. I didn't get a dog and pony show from him - but I didn't get one the first time I used him either and I trusted him enough to have him do this.

I know a lot of folks are down on their doctors for their outcome. My outcome was positive, but I was told up front that it would be negative. He told me that, based on the MRI, I would lose at least half my nerve bundles, if not more. I lost a couple nerve endings and kept most of the nerves on one side and all on the other.

Just before I went in for surgery someone here posted a Sloan doctor's presentation that depressed the living hell out of me. The guy backed up what my doctor said about the vast majority of men experiencing ED and/or incontinence. But there was one take-away from that video that stuck with me, he said that if your sexual function is important to you that it doesn't hurt to remind your surgeon of that right before surgery so that when he's in there he's thinking about it and maybe take a few extra minutes to examine the nerves a little more thoroughly before just cutting them out. I did that very thing, and I even told my wife that if I forgot to say it that I wanted her to remind him. I don't know if that made any difference, but I didn't lose half my nerves due to the protrusion on my prostate.

The point being that not all experiences are the same. I saw 9 different doctors before making my decision, not a single one of them recommended their specialty, they all recommended surgery, every one. Now I'm only 54 and that was a huge factor because they all prefaced with "at your age", but my experience wasn't "surgeons want to cut and oncologists want to radiate".

I think whoever told you that it was a walk in the park and you'd be back to work right away was irresponsible for saying those things.

It makes me think of Airplane where they inflate the auto pilot.

I reckon he had a midget standing just off-camera, turning water on & off.
🙂

Yes, the doctors you saw were all telling you that surgery was the answer. After attending weekly advanced prostate cancer meetings at Ancan.org we heard where surgery was recommended for people that it just didn’t make sense to do. They were either too old or their cancer had spread too much.

Not all urologists are the same. One of the doctors who comes to almost every meeting is in his 80s and his urologist kept telling him he was fine as his PSA kept rising. He ended up very high risk because his urologist didn’t pay attention to his results. Not all urologists are equal.

I ran a computer consulting business. I had no real backup. I really did go to the office of some of my clients four days after surgery. By a week after surgery, the only issue was the catheter, the bag for which I had in my pants leg. No one ever knew I had surgery. I was 62 at the time and I just didn’t have any pain from the surgery, so I went to work. I didn’t do any heavy lifting for a couple of weeks.