The day after seed implants...

   

The Further Adventures of RadioActive Man Return with us now to the time of yesterday when the lights were turned off and I glowed in the dark... sorta

Man... it is hard to keep a straight face after a lead-in like that. But maybe I'm too close to the subject.   I'll try and relate the story, or what I can remember of it, because a great deal of it is just a blank.  Really.  Scary how blank it is, but that's a general anesthetic for ya. One minute you're chatting away, and the next... well... you're waking up somewhere else. So, for the next couple of weeks I'm told I can set off radiation detectors at the airport. But it won't last. Cesium, the radioactive part of the titanium seeds they implanted, has a 9.5 day half-life, so the amount of radiation is going to go down fairly soon.

We arrived at the hospital where the procedure was being done just before 10am and were directed to a bay in the surgical prep area and as soon as one of the nurses came over I was directed to undress and get in a hospital gown.  So.. I did that and got on the bed/gurney and the nurse came back and hooked me up to a warming device.  Turned out the gown had a kind of lining that they pumped warm air into.  Very nice.  I played with seeing how big I could make my chest and stuff... while Ginny cringed and (I'm making this up) said she was just a close friend. 

And then, surprise surprise surprise... they began asking me all the questions they'd asked the day before.  And talk about cumbersome user interfaces.  This one looked like it had been a direct port from some old mainframe panel-driven interface into a web-based form model. Anyway, we filled out the form and joked around with the nurse... and then we were visited by the OR nurse, and then the Anesthesiologist dropped by to chat for a few minutes.  Each of them confirmed that I knew my name and birthday (and that those matched who they thought they were going to work on).  They split and yet another nurse came to wheel me in to the OR. 

We got into the room, and all the people introduced themselves... but I'm not sure of their roles. One must have been a ultrasound person, a couple of surgical nurses, the anesthesiologist, and finally my radiation oncologist stepped up to say hi (and ask if I had done my prep steps (which, of course I had)).  Then the anesthesiologist started chatting me up about what other sports I did besides bicycling, and while I was talking he casually said something about giving me something to relax. And I don't remember anything else until about an hour later when i started to wake up in the recovery zone. Incredible.

While I was slowly coming around, with a whanging headache, and another set of nurses who welcomed me back into the conscious world, I slowly became conscious of the catheter (which was a less than comfortable) and already I was thinking about when that could come out.

The time came to get dressed and wheel me out... and that went smoothly. I wished I had worn some pants that were a little baggier than the jeans I had on... but everything fit OK. We headed home and I headed to bed... mainly because of the headache and still being a bit strung out on the anesthetic.

Sleeping was a trick with the catheter still in. It took me a few tries to figure out the right way to get in bed... sort of a modified Western Roll (for you old school high jump fans) seemed to work best. 
And I was up several times trying to figure out how to position things better, or more comfortably. Sometime in the early morning (today) I think the uncomfortable feeling of having that in diminished somewhat.

This morning, my daughter Tracy took me to the radiation oncologist's office to get a CT scan done, to make sure everything was in place, and the catheter removed.  The nurse who came in to remove the catheter thought that taking the tape off my leg was going to hurt more than removing the catheter but told me I could be the judge. I think it was a wash... about equal, but different, pain. Fortunately, neither lasted very long, and now I'm feeling much better and glad I didn't have that in for 2 weeks (which would have been the case if I'd taken the surgical route).

 They took a cool x-ray shot of my pelvic area during the procedure that I have a copy of. You can see the seeds in there, and I counted 26 on one side, and 24 on the other, but there could be more. It looks as if there is some overlap in some areas.  Interested?  It looks like this:

Sorta. Only not blue.  And a different angle.

So, I have follow-up appointments with both doctors, one later this month, one in mid-January.  I suppose by the time we get to the one in January I'll have a better idea on when the external beam radiation will begin... as well as a better idea on how the seeds have affected me. Supposedly, I won't start feeling the full effect of them for a few days now.  Mostly, that will surface as urgency to eliminate coupled with swelling that will make it hard to eliminate.  Double whammy.  :-)

Time will tell.  But so far, another step taken along this path.