MK tell us your story

Grinder

MK... if you want to help the guys who come to this forum, you should tell the whole story from beginning to end. If you only share snippets in an effort to disparage robotic surgery, no one will know why robotic surgery was wrong in your instance, and how they can avoid those outcomes.

You have mentioned your marriage relationship has collapsed... I dont understand how that could happen. You mentioned your wife is a nurse... shouldn't she be more sensitive to health care issues and their ramifications and emotional impact on the patient? How long have you been married? Were you newlyweds?

What kind of faith do you practice? Are you Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Atheist? This may seem unrelated to your situation, but we have all had such discussions in this forum. Your faith is a big player in the prostate cancer experience.

How much experience did your surgeon have? How many surgeries did he perform? Why did you or your wife choose him? How long a wait did you have between the biopsy and the surgery? Is he the same surgeon that did the TURP? How much collateral damage was done to the surrounding tissues and nerve bundles? Was the cancer worse than diagnosed prior to the surgery?

You need to tell the whole story for the guys who will visit this forum in the future. As for me, none of this matters. I had my surgery, and i can walk away from this forum and everyone can kiss my a** and it won't matter one iota whether i post on this forum or read another word ever again. They can outlaw robotic prostatectomies  tomorrow and it  won't phase me a bit because i got mine done and why should I care if no one else ever gets their prostates taken out or not?

But like everybody else in here, I prefer to share my experience so other guys can make educated decisions. I have tried not to leave anything out, even the embarrassing stuff like self stimulation that I call "flying solo" and my shorter business that I call "Stubby" and the humiliating experience (try to picture this and put yourself in my place) of having several male and female nurses standing over your naked body all trying their turns to unsuccessfully insert a foley catheter into your infected business past your massive prostate in a pool of  blood on your abdomen because you cannot urinate and the bladder seems ready to burst and they finally give up and the ER director calls your urologist and demands they deal with this immediately. Ask my wife how humiliating that was, she watched the whole thing .and the whole time i was thinking PLEASE get it in so I can urinate!

Can you top that? Either way you should tell the whole story and find out what happened, and not for any of us guys who already had it done... it doesnt matter to us. But it will matter for the other guys to know  what happened and why it happened. 

MK1965

Everything isknown

Grinder,

i do not hide anything.

MK

RobLee

We all have horror stories

Every one of us. It is the nature of online medical forums such as this that those who had a complicated experience will stick around and chat with others about it.  The guys who had a simple DRE that was biopsied as 3+3 and were treated (RP or RT), recovered urinary and sexual function and lived happily ever after are the ones we generally will never hear from in a forum such as this one.  And I am guessing that they are likely the majority of cases.  Even those who ended up on active surveilance for a number of years probably don't stick around here as long as they feel their doctor is doing what it right for them.

But none of our experiences are isolated either. We have other medical conditions, even other cancers in our lives, in addition to ordinary "real life" stresses such as family issues and job changes, home maintenance, finances, social obligations... it all builds up, and complications related to this disease and our treatment only compound the number of stresses we must deal with every day.  Even vacations are rarely ever a pure getaway. We never get a break.

My signature line in another forum is Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you cannot see... Be kind!"

 

Max Former Hodgkins Stage 3

RobLee said:

We all have horror stories

Every one of us. It is the nature of online medical forums such as this that those who had a complicated experience will stick around and chat with others about it.  The guys who had a simple DRE that was biopsied as 3+3 and were treated (RP or RT), recovered urinary and sexual function and lived happily ever after are the ones we generally will never hear from in a forum such as this one.  And I am guessing that they are likely the majority of cases.  Even those who ended up on active surveilance for a number of years probably don't stick around here as long as they feel their doctor is doing what it right for them.

But none of our experiences are isolated either. We have other medical conditions, even other cancers in our lives, in addition to ordinary "real life" stresses such as family issues and job changes, home maintenance, finances, social obligations... it all builds up, and complications related to this disease and our treatment only compound the number of stresses we must deal with every day.  Even vacations are rarely ever a pure getaway. We never get a break.

My signature line in another forum is Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you cannot see... Be kind!"

 

Indeed !

Love that line, Rob. 

I didn't marry until 33, and so my kids are younger than most guy's here -- early 20s.  They thought the grass was always greener with their friends. I told them many times that every living soul on this earth has things in the closet, things they do not readily share. And every one of them will become aged, get diseases, and die.  Responses to this vary massively, from religious hope, to abject, immediate dispair. (Note:  NONE of what I just wrote was directed particularly at Mk 1965)

My daughter had a friend who was rich, lived in a virtual palace. My wife and I bicker a lot, and my daughter was always telling me how her rich friend's parents never fought, and were always warm around each other.

Then, one day, her friend told her that her father had moved out, in with his mistress. The wife filed for divorce, and she was remarried not long thereafter, to the boyfriend she had been seeing on the side !   I told my daughter that a little bickering is healthier than a massive, calm lie.  My daughter learned a lot from that whole episode.

Every family, ever individual, has a lot of problems: emotional, physical, economic, family.

You are spot-on, Rob.

max

Grinder

You never know

Anectodally, I had a divorced lady friend who married another divorcee. He had been divorced because his wife was having an affair. What he did not know... until he went to the doctor because of a mysterious illness, that he thought was heavy metals and was getting progressively worse during the time he was married... his wife had been putting graduating minute doses of poison in his food. Yes, it sounds like a murder mystery novel. The cheating wife and her boyfriend figured she would be the beneficiary of the estate and insurance, so they would just keep the affair going instead of divorce, not counting on my friend coming along and starting a relationship with the cuckholded husband, spurring him to divorce the cheating wife. It took more than a week of cleanses and detox to clear out whatever it was.

Like Max said... you never know what's going on under the surface of a seemingly normal relationship. 

The strangest part... what kind of fool would have an affair with, and then marry, a woman who would incrementally poison her first husband? I never heard anything about them since, but he better prepare his own food.

As for my friend and the cuckholded husband... they couldn't be happier, They are both into professional photography and travel the country together. He went from a quietly hostile, cheating, not terribly attractive wife who  wanted him dead... to a very attractive, smart, very amiable and very loyal wife with shared interests.

Baby it's a wild world.