Tommorow is the Big Day

Dave,

Best of luck! Tell your surgeon to be sure he brings his "A" game!

My Davinci was three years ago and I recall I badly wanted to see the robot up close (engineer's curiosity). But they put me under way too quickly to get a good look. A year later a local hospital brought a Davinci robot to our local Lifelong Learning annual kickoff meeting. They were planning to allow us senior citizens to operate the thing, stretching rubber bands over a pair of nails hammered into a board. I was first in line. I sat down at the controls and it blew all the fuses in the place leaving several hundred folks disappointed. They could never get it running for the whole morning. My career as a "surgeon" was over before it began.

Seriously, I was amazed at how quickly I recovered. I left the operating room at about 5:30pm after 4+ hours of surgery and walked to my car just after noon the next day. My wife drove me the two hours home without incident. Despite marginal post-op pathology, my PSA has stayed non-detectable (except for one testing error about a year ago). My biggest problems have been ED and a dribble that causes me to need a pad during the day. I'm fine at night. I'm a little jealous of the many others who maintain function completely and I hope you're one of those guys!

Roadracer

Tell the robot I said hello.  I think it's a "she," because I still have half a dozen little love bites on my abdomen. She came and went while I was asleep, sort of like Santa Claus, and I have no recollection of anything in the operating theater.  She seems to have done good work for me, and I wish you the same. 

I'll know more very soon.  My surgery was August 20th, and today I finally have my first post-op PSA drawn.

We'll all be thinking of you tomorrow.  What part of the world are you in? 

Best of luck, I hope it all goes well. Keep a positive attitude and do what the nurses tell you to. You'll be home in a couple of days.

See you on the other side. Best wishies for you.

Cajun Jeff

Good luck, Dave, and we will see you safey on the other side

The best of luck and good health to you Dave. I have a friend that had his robotic surgery a week after mine and 3 weeks later he was duck hunting in Nebraska. Hopefully you will have the same good fortune. Keep us posted.
Stay well and blessed
TTaylor

I wish you good luck. The room I was rolled into looked like a NASCAR garage that was packed with stuff. I don't know if the machine was in the room or not. I was out within a minute of getting there. I've thought of asking my surgeon if there is a recording of the procedure if so I'd like to get a copy. Maybe when I see him in Feb.

clocknut said...


We'll all be thinking of you tomorrow. What part of the world are you in?

I'm in western/central CT. Surgery is at Danbury Hospital.

I told my doc to eat light before working on me. Don't like the idea of him getting the hiccups while working on me. One little slip and the robot flings me off the table

Thanks all for the kind words.

Aloha!

Best of luck with the surgery! Now you get to start down the path of recovery, so see you on the other side. First after care advice, on your feet as soon as possible, walk as often as possible, drink ever increasing amounts of water, ad distance to your walking daily. You got lots of toxins, junk and gunk to come out shortly, and walking with lots of water will flush them out and get your internal systems back to normal again. Good luck.

Dave:

All the best with your upcoming surgery. Get up and walk as soon as possible and keep walking.  Drink an abundance of water and wash yourself out regularly.  Keep us posted as the guys here offer so much to the healing process.  I just hooked up with this forum as I began HT a month or so ago.  Two and a half years previous I had surgery, followed by RT 18 months later. I wish I would have found this forum then as it was a very lonely recovery.  Everyone around me was supportive but I still felt I was alone through everything.  I guess you really have to "be there" to really understand.  Good luck to you!

Jack

GTODave,

One advantage of robots is that they damp out the small tremor that all human beings have in their hands. Don't know if they know enough to damp out a hiccup, though.
I remember seeing the multiarmed machine as I was wheeled in. All the arms had plastic sleeves on them, no doubt for sanitation. No pretty nurses for me, just a bunch of us guys.

DJ

Best of luck, hope for a quick, dry, ED free and uneventful recovery.
Dave in Durango