I'm two weeks and a day out from surgery and so glad to be past it! The surgery was a success with the cancer contained in the prostate, no positive margins and a good recovery.
I took a picture of my wife and I as we walked across the street less than 24 hours from the end of my surgery the day before. I held my iPhone at arms length and we captured the UC Irvine Douglas Hospital in the background. I have my arm around my wife and we're in the Southern California sun and if you did not know it, you would think we had just taken a happy vacation picture. I walked around 15 miles over the next seven days until the catheter was removed. We went to the beach at Salt Creek and walked the boardwalk at Newport Beach. The worst of the pain came from the CO2 gas migrating to my shoulders over the first 4 days. experienced very little testicular swelling and no bruising or discoloration. I also experienced very little blood in my urine and very few noticeable blood clots coming out while I had the catheter. BAsed on what I have read on this forum, I have to think that is a bit rare.
I chose Dr. Thomas Ahlering from UC Irvine for some very simple reasons. Knowing surgical skill is paramount to a good surgery, I put a high focus on this in speaking with other surgeons. Being from Texas, I would have been happy to find a surgeon in Texas and after meeting with Dr. Slawin, Dr. Kella, Dr. Justin Lee and Dr. David Shepherd I found Dr. Kella to be the most experienced and comforting. However, none of these MDs could really articulate their own outcomes numbers for the three trifecta areas we're most concerned about
. Dr. Kella has the data but it was not currently in a format he could share with me. I liked him a lot. Dr. Slawin's numbers date back to his time as the head of Urologic Surgery at Baylor. He was recommending doing a nerve graft surgery and I just couldn't find any studies where this is really that successful (other than Dr. Slawins).
When I asked surgeons how many robotic surgeries they had performed, all gave me what seemed to be estimates. When I asked Dr. Ahlering, he gave the the exact number, including the two surgery cases he had done that morning. When I asked him about
his outcomes, having viewed his videos online and actually knowing the answers, he was able to clearly articulate the numbers. He went on to further explain the evolution of his technique and how that impacted his outcomes. We discussed his ongoing clinical trial for prostate cooling (think icing a sprain before it happens, thus reducing the swelling and inflammation).
At the end of the day, with a young son, I chose Dr. Ahlering because I knew he would do a careful surgery. I learned (form a highly regarded and retired robotic surgeon) Dr. Ahlering limits the number of surgeries he does to make sure he is fresh and able to focus on great outcomes for each patient. As expected, he took about
four hours to do my surgery. More than one surgeon I spoke with said they could complete the surgery in one and a half hours. I have a hard time believing they are really taking care to do it without stretching the nerves and causing damage in such a rush to get through in a short time frame.
I chose Dr. Ahlering because he's at the forefront of research for PCa. I wanted to make sure my surgical experience was tracked, recorded and documented for the benefit of others, including my son.
Thank you all for your support. I hope to report ZEROS in a few months!
