Tag Archives: cancer awareness

Today I had another chance to enjoy a trip to Stoke Mandeville hospital for my third PSA-level check since my radical prostatectomy. Coincidentally, it is one year to the day since I dressed (briefly) in a theatre gown and was ushered into the wings of the operating theatre awaiting my entrance to go under the knife. Actually, this should have been my fourth post-operative check but holidays [vacations in Amerispeak] got in the way somewhat. Well, one shouldn’t let medical issues disturb having a good time too much, eh?

Carol cleverly avoided the normal Stoke Mandeville parking nightmare by kicking me out of the car in the near vicinity – at least she came to a halt before doing so – and then smartly dashing off to do some planning for her mum’s approaching 90th birthday bash.

I walked the short distance to outpatients reception to check in, then wandered along to the waiting room. I had hardly sat down and begun reading one of the traditionally out of date magazines before I was called in to see the consultant. Odd! This is the first time my appointment has ever been on-time.

PSA-level = zero.

I have to return for another check in March but, if that is still zero, they will let my GP carry out the further tests. Actually, I had been expecting that to happen this time; I think it’s normal after one year. My suspicion is that the consultant saw just three test results, which are normally at 3-monthly intervals, and didn’t realize that my year was, in fact, up. Still, no worries, I don’t have much else planned for March. I walked back into town to meet Carol.

It was a curious hospital trip: no stressful searching for a parking space and no one hour wait staring at paint flaking off the walls.

Excellent news, happy anniversary.

I must have been having too much fun over the summer because I just realized that it’s been a long time since I wrote anything about my recovery from my radical prostatectomy. My last entry seems to have been April 16th. That’ll never do – time to correct my oversight and keep awareness high, especially as we approach Movember again. To cut a long story short, my news is all good.

Following our spring jaunt around France for a disgustingly decadent eight weeks, I went to the consultant’s clinic for my second postoperative PSA level check. Now, before the result, here’s a brief aside. Another guy  breezed in, sat beside me and, not knowing me from Adam or my current situation, starting blathering on about how wonderful his PSA results were and chirpily finishing with, “oh yes, happy days”. I could have been sitting there with a terminal condition – he didn’t know. What a complete plonker! Fortunately I wasn’t; my second result was the same as the first check, as near to zero as they can measure (0.05).

We’ve just returned from France part deux, hence my rather elongated period of silence. This trip was a mere six weeks. About a week into the trip, since my i-Pads seemed to be staying largely dry recently, I bit the bullet and decided to try a day “going commando” in a manner of speaking. I was probably also spurred on by the fact that 30°C weather gets a little warm wearing an i-Pad, so lets have it off! I wouldn’t say that I feel 100% secure but I haven’t worn one since and I haven’t yet disgraced myself (my fingers are very firmly crossed).

Ditching the i-Pads after wearing them for nine months required a leap of faith. I had tried returning from the shower block without one – i-Pads and shower cubicles do not mix well – on the earlier French trip and found that I got caught out once or twice so it made me a little leery and I had to get over my lack of confidence.

So, there it is, everything is going in the right direction. I’ll be having my next blood test, coincidentally, on the one year anniversary of my operation, December 2nd.

I’ve already been away in our caravan since my prostatectomy but the caravan is still a very personal space. However, last weekend was another milestone of sorts in that we ventured over to near Ipswich where we would be staying with some old friends in their space. When I stay old friends, I mean friends of long-standing, of course. Our friends still work but, courtesy of the long awaited – at least, it seemed long-awaited – Royal Wedding, they’d be chez-eux on Friday so they didn’t mind when we turned up. We thought we’d take advantage of our route and check the RSPB’s HQ at Sandy, Bedfordshire, en route to see who might be hanging around before descending upon them in the late afternoon.

Also courtesy of the Royal Wedding, the roads were very quiet – reminiscent of travelling in France. In this respect, we should have Royal Weddings more often. On second thoughts, maybe not, since they let Satan’s Little Disciples out of school. Anyway, it seemed most of the wildlife was also inside watching the pomp and ceremony. I spotted a Stock Dove (not a Woodpigeon) but it was a very poor specimen, poorly positioned photographically, that would have been better off in some stock. I also caught the green flash of a Green Woodpecker flitting between trees but all in all, it was very quiet bird-wise. Disappointing. My highlight was a small pond where, above a few Smooth Newts in breeding plumage, a Pond Skater (Gerris) seemed to be tucking into a hapless Alder Fly (Sialis). On the surface (pun intended), Pond Skaters look fairly harmless but they are actually pretty fearsome creatures; I’ve seen a picture of several overpowering a dragonfly.

On Saturday, strong winds screaming in off the north sea at Aldburgh provided a refreshing blow along the very pebbly beach. Watching seagulls flying backwards was quite amusing. I think this one, a Herring Gull (Larus argentatus), is trying to look behind itself to see where it might be going. Just kidding, it was making slow forward progress. Less amusing was our attempting to walk back to the car into the headwind. I understood the seagull’s concern.

Another wild and windy but clear day on Sunday proved Alton Water Reservoir to be far more successful on the bird front than the RSPB reserve at Sandy on Friday. A couple of years ago in France, we spent many hours trying to identify the owner of a particularly piercing, melodious voice. We were a little surprised but delighted to hear that same, haunting melody ringing out around the wooded edge of the reservoir. They are secretive birds that normally remain steadfastly hidden in foliage, even at a distance of 3m/10ft, making a photo nigh on impossible. When one obligingly hops onto a branch right in front of you and begins singing, however, one’s chances improve dramatically. The tuneful culprit is a Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos). Here’s a sample: Nightingale song

The luck wasn’t over yet. Back to our friends’ back garden for a sunny Sunday barbecue and good ol’ Hawk-eyes Carol spotted what at first looked like a Hornet (large flying thing with yellow on it) buzz into the garden. It alighted on a shrub (don’t quote me about the shrub) and said, “photograph me please”. You can see how the yellow might cause confusion from a distance but this is a magnificent, young and therefore pristine, male Broad-bodied Chaser (Libellula depressa). Mature males develop a blue pruinescence (powdery coating) on their abdomens and look very different. I confess to initially thinking that this was a female, since I’ve only previously seen older pruinose males, before being corrected by my good friends at iSpot. Live and learn!

Another great weekend, if a little on the wild side, and all went well, as expected. How long is this ridiculous but beautiful weather going on, though?

For Odonata, a.k.a. Dragonflies and Damselflies, that is.

It has been a long winter for a relatively new addict for many reasons, not the least of which, of course, were my surgical experiences caused by ridding myself of a freshly emerged cancerous prostate. Freshly emerged last September, that is. My hope was to have myself fixed up and recovered by the time the new wildlife watching season started. Not wishing to get ahead of myself, but it looks as though it may have happened.

Given my latest addiction, a few weeks ago I decided to join the Bedfordshire Natural History Society. Using their records from 2010, I discovered that the first Damselflies records were Large Red Damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula – these are always first) on 20th April, 2010, at Duck End Nature Reserve at Maulden, Beds. We’ve had some staggeringly good weather this spring so off I went with my spotter (hawk-eyes Carol doesn’t miss much) looking for much more welcome freshly emerged cellular clusters.

Sally Satnav got very confused trying to get us to within a spit of Duck End. Some scurrilous rascal has slung in a completely new road heading for Bedford, a road that neither I nor she knew about. Thinking I was at a different roundabout, I mistakenly turned onto said new road. Poor Sally!; as far as she was concerned our little Mazda MX5 was emulating our Honda CR-V and was merrily tromping across the farm fields of Bedfordshire like a fully accomplished off-roader. Garmins are irritatingly amusing when you get off course – “recalculating, recalculting, recalculating”. Actually, since our Garmin is currently set to French [Ed: Don’t ask] she muttered, very sexily, “calcul encore, calcul encore, calcul encore”. Naturally, since we were now not on a road as far as she was concerned, she had a very hard time calcul-ing encore. Eventually, though, we hit a road that did exist a few months ago and both she and we were back on track. OK, Sally, don’t panic.

With the help of a local allotment holder, we located Duck End NR, forced our way through about 10 football-toting youths [Ed: Darwin, how much better the world is when Satan’s little disciples are incarcerated in school!] and started looking for signs of intelligent life. Orange Tip butterflies were in profusion but very uncooperative. A Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria) was much better behaved and basked with its wings nicely opened. Nearby, a Small White (Artogeia rapae) seemed to be sucking moisture from some mud but didn’t sit very long and certainly not with its wings open – they rarely do. Both enabled me to get a little practice, though.

For a pocket-handkerchief of a reserve, Duck End sports four bodies of water. Having tried #1 and #2 to not avail, I was studying  #3 when I heard my spotter dry, “here!” back at the far side of #1. Bingo, hawk-eyes had seen our first damselfly of the year. Just as I was getting my camera ready, it flew off into the trees. Bugger! We waited, we watched – nothing. Curses! I shouldn’t have worried, hawk-eyes wandered a little further along the hawthorn hedge and spotted a few other Large Red damsels. Hawthorn hedges and brambles make for a confusing background, confusing enough to cause my Canon EOS 40D autofocus logic to get very confused. Bugger! Over winter, I’d forgotten how frustrating this focus-hunting can be. Eventually I got it stabilized enough for some decent shots of these truly beautiful critters, though.

Hawk-eyes struck again when she found a couple of exuviae attached to some of the vegetation surrounding the damsels’ nursery pond. One was particularly interesting because at least one lamella was still attached to the rear end of the abdomen. The lamellae, there are usually three, are like gills  for damselfly larvae and absorb oxygen from the water .

I have just realized that that, during this entire afternoon, not once did I think about any incontinence. That’s the first day that’s happened for four months. Wow!

An excellent day – not only was the weather stunning but my friends are back! Something else may be mostly back, too, but I don’t want to jinx it.

Today it is exactly four calendar months since the removal of my post-prostatectomy catheter, the start of Mr. Leaky, so I thought another progress bulletin was in order.

There’s a couple of things to point out about this return to continence process, assuming I haven’t already done so. [Ed: A senior moment, eh?] The first is that the level of security can vary quite markedly from day to day. I have frequently been somewhat disappointed having suffered a less secure day following what seemed like a relatively very good day. This phenomenon is something I’ve tagged Inconsistent Incontinence, or II (eye-eye) for short. I’ve no idea why it happens, but it does. This is one of the reasons it is important to take an average view and look back a week or two to gauge progress.

A second feature is that, as progress is made, it gets quite difficult to assess further progress. In the earlier stages of recovery it is quite obvious, for example, that you can now get out to the driveway and into the car securely whereas a little while ago, down the hall to the kitchen was one’s limit. Even judging the difference between walking, say, a quarter mile compared to half a mile are quite easy to gauge. Once over a mile, though, progress gets trickier (unless you resort to a pedometer or GPS solution). During our recent two weeks sauntering around the New Forest, I felt much the same as I had for about the previous month: get about a mile, then start noticing that old I’m-about-to-leak sensation.

This week, however, has provided a couple of good milestones – another good reason for a progress update. I joined our local U3A walking group on Tuesday for a 5½ mile walk around some very pleasant woodland and countryside in our vicinity. It’s only two weeks since we were in the New Forest but I felt, really, very secure. I very nearly made it as far as the 3-mile post, actually, 2.8 miles (I admit it, I used the GPS solution), before any lack of security crept in, and then it was very slight. I was/am delighted.

I had even stressed myself a day earlier by voluntarily lifting and re-laying several heavy patio slabs to correct a slight subsidence. A couple of months ago any work of a heavy nature would certainly have caused a bit of a leak but I seemed to cope admirably.

Remembering the first feature, II, I’m resisting getting carried away. I’m certainly not ready to ditch the i-Pad Manos just yet but I am very positive about recent progress. Cycling is no problem at all, except that I sometimes think that I suffer a slightly increased weakness as an after-effect of it, and if I can indulge in 5-mile or more walks without too much concern then, in practical terms, life is not too far from normal. I can indulge in the pastimes I enjoy.

We’ve booked the ferry for France ready for our spring migration. Yeah!

Having re-acquainted ourselves with the New Forest last September, courtesy of waiting on things medical, we had rather optimistically booked ourselves into a year-round campsite there for New Year. New Year in the New Forest: seems almost poetic. At the time of making the booking, I was expecting some temporary incontinence but I was still thinking stress incontinence. As we now know, the level of it was rather more severe following my prostatectomy on 2nd December. In the light of our more complete knowledge, we rearranged our booking for late March. There was, as it turned out, an additional problem at New Year: snow. Towing a caravan/trailer down to the New Forest in snow would never have been an enjoyable or, indeed, sensible task.

When it came to the re-arrangement we lucked out. We went down a few days early and arrived in stunning (for March in England) weather. Traffic was light and the sun was shining – the journey was a dream. With the exception of one day, the run of glorious weather continued for the 12 days of our stay. Unhappily, I wasn’t the only attendee with a damp problem; our caravan, Billy, has come out in sympathy to show moral support. At his recent service, the “engineer” reported the beginnings of water ingress in his near-side rear quarter. If that wasn’t enough, he’s leaking water back out of the pressurized on-board water system into the external container. I know exactly how he feels! I’d just as soon he wasn’t showing quite such a level of support, however.

I wouldn’t normally think that visiting an essentially broad-leaved deciduous forest in winter would be so enjoyable but enjoyable it was. With no forest canopy, all the ample sunlight was filtering through the bare branches of the trees and hitting the forest floor. Additionally, the forest floor’s undergrowth (largely bracken) had died down for the winter and was dormant so the views through the well-lit trees were very good. Of course, different weather would have produced a different story but it was all very pleasant.

We were there over the theoretical beginning of spring and the wildlife was beginning to wake up to its spring tasks. We had plenty of bird life around our pitch feeding on feeders we had taken with us (for the first time). Expecting the forest tracks to be quite muddy, we had armed (legged?) ourselves with Wellington boots and indulged in several nature rambles of 3-4 miles or so. I wasn’t quite as watertight as the Wellies but any leakages were not severe enough to stop the enjoyment. The nature highlights were the year’s first butterflies emerging in the form of the sulphur-yellow Brimstones and I managed to snag a pair of Pond Skaters in flagrante delicto, poor things. Actually, I didn’t notice that they were a pair in a passionate embrace until I loaded the shot on my laptop back at Billy. It’s amazing how blind I can be staring through a view-finder.

The low point was being attacked by a New Forest pony. Commoners have grazing rights and their ponies, plus a few cattle, wander about essentially freely. The ponies are quite famous and are usually very placid, though tourists are requested not to interfere with them and advised to give them a respectably amount of space. In this case, we were giving the pony in question a wide berth but it took it into its head actively to pursue me. It crossed about 60ft/20m of open ground to get to the path down which Carol and I were walking and followed us down the path before turning its rear-end towards me and lashing out twice with both hind legs. The first kick missed but the second was more successful and made contact with my right hip, fortunately only relatively lightly. Had it been my stomach, I’d have been less philosophical about it, I suspect.

We’d taken our bicycles, too, and tried our first post-operative bike rides of any real note. We started with a quite modest 8 miles but very soon thereafter indulged in a 27-mile round trip to Bucklers Hard, an historic 18th century ship building village. Several ships for Admiral Nelson’s fleet were built here from oak trees felled in the New Forest. Since one galleon required about 2000 oak trees, I began to see why there are tracts of forest with no trees at all. Such were the delights of the unseasonal spell of weather that we also cycled to the south coast to enjoy a seaside ice cream, as if we weren’t taking in enough calories in the form of alcohol. (It’s completely unfair that alcohol contains any calories at all.) Not only did we find a particularly splendid ice cream but we were also entertained by a gaggle of paragliders drifting back and forth along the cliffs of Barton-on-sea while we ate it. Paragliders make a wonderfully colourful photographic subject, especially against a clear blue sky.

So, all in all a great time. Like my caravan, I may not be 100% watertight yet but, if, as I did, I can embark on 4-mile walks and 25-mile bike rides without too much in the way of consternation, then life is definitely on the way to returning to my kind of normal.

Following my radical prostatectomy last December, Friday was my second follow-up appointment with the medical team and the first for my post-operative PSA level checks. The hospital was typically manic with the waiting areas full to overflowing and my appointment was clearly going to be late happening.

As well as Stoke Mandeville hospital, Aylesbury boasts one of Her Majesty’s prisons. As we were waiting patiently, in walked a pair of prison officers, one of whom had one of Her Majesty’s prisoners attached to him with handcuffs. The trio sat right in front of us which, rightly or wrongly, I must say made me a little apprehensive. Carol noticed that the unattached prison officer was browsing a skiing brochure, which, in front of one incarcerated, we thought might be verging on the mentally cruel, even though we knew not what he was “in for”. Sniff of the free world, albeit for a medical problem, and a ski brochure being waved under your nose.

Our wait turned out to be about 45 minutes but was well worthwhile; I couldn’t have hoped for better news – my PSA reading was 0.05 which, the surgeon said, was effectively zero. Apparently, just as with temperature, with PSA absolute zero never happens. Everyone was happy.

Naturally, we also discussed my continence which, though not yet fully restored, seems to continue to improve. Last week I felt confident enough to resume accompanying our local walking group on a 4½ mile slither and slide through some very muddy local countryside. Dawkins, we’ve had a lot of rain lately! Though I didn’t stay completely dry on the inside, I ended up considerably less damp than the ground was on the outside. I thought that walking might be exercise that would benefit my recovery but it seem not – it exercises the wrong muscles. I was regaled to continue my pelvic floor (a.k.a. Kegel) exercises. So, ladies, I’m still with you!

On Saturday evening and Sunday morning I had another brush with a recovery process. Last week I installed Windows 7 Service pack 1 on what is supposed to be becoming my main laptop. Service Pack 1 can be a very large download (80 – 900Mb) and update, especially if you don’t keep applying updates piecemeal as they are released. I do and the process downloaded a mere 87Mb but still took 58 minutes to complete, end to end, though it must be said that we suffer from a particularly slow broadband connection (~1.3Mbs), being a long way from our exchange.

All appeared to be well until Saturday evening. Having closed the lid to instigate a hibernation, when I re-started the machine I was greeted with the unwelcome message that Windows had detected errors when starting and offered me the choice of letting it attempt to recover (recommended) or just starting normally. I’d had nothing critical “in flight” to lose so I tried starting normally. Back came the same unwelcome screen. Each time I selected “start normally”, back came that screen.

OK, I thought, clearly I have to pick the “attempt to recover” option. Quick as lightening, some people. It looked more promising; a blue-sky-with-vapour-trails Windows backdrop appeared together with a mouse pointer and nothing else. For a brief while the cyclone “doing something” symbol appeared beside the mouse pointer, then disappeared and nothing further seemed to be happening. I had recovery disks but couldn’t get into Windows or Dell software to do anything with them. I hit the big OFF button and tried booting from them but ended up in the same place. I didn’t actually know if they were bootable, after all. Defeated, I hit the big OFF button again and went to bed.

In the cold light of Sunday morning, I wondered if the blue-sky-with-vapour-trails Windows backdrop might be doing something unannounced behind the scenes, like downloading stuff. I kicked it of again and left it. After about 15 minutes, sure enough, it claimed to be “scanning for errors”. Sometime later the screen changed to a more hopeful “attempting repairs” and a blue block began tromping its way repetitively across a progress bar on the screen. That was six hours ago; the blue is still tromping.

There are <Prev>, <Next> and <Cancel> buttons at the bottom of the screen. Only <Cancel> is active, <Prev> and <Next> are greyed out. I thought I might as well give up and try a Dell “System Restore”. I clicked the <Cancel> button.

The current repair operation cannot be cancelled. <OK>

… it said, wittily. What’s with the <Cancel> button, then?

Arghh

So, do I just leave it running? I’m not convinced that it’s actually doing anything. Carol found someone reporting that their Windows 7 repair had been running for 26 hours and was still going. Yikes! This stupid Dell Inspiron doesn’t even have a hard drive light such as is useful in indicating activity. All I can hear is the fan. [SCREAM!]

The 45 minute wait at the hospital was much more rewarding.

[This posting made possible by my old laptop now running Ubuntu.]

Considering the fact that I was born in February, I really should be used to it being a short month by now. I’m not, though; I never seem to be prepared for March to start. Slow learning curve I guess. So, here we are at the last day of February and it’s approaching three months since my radical prostatectomy. That makes it time to begin a year of 3-monthly follow-up blood tests for PSA. It is apparently necessary to wait three months after the operation to allow all existing PSA to get flushed from the system. If, as is hoped, all those nasty prostate cells have been successfully removed, my PSA level should drop to pretty much zero. This morning at 8:10 AM, I visited our practice nurse to get the blood sample taken and sent to the hospital. I should be given the results this Friday afternoon at my second follow-up meeting with the urology nurse. Fingers firmly crossed!

I’ve also agreed to take part in a UK Genetic Prostate Cancer Study being performed by the ICR (Institute of Cancer Research). That involved a questionnaire about my relatives, already completed, and two more samples of blood which our obliging practice nurse drew at the same time as the PSA sample to save on the holes.

This weekend was definitely my most active yet. We are both getting stir-crazy as a result of our dull winter but, since Sunday morning was unusually sunny, Carol decided to walk into town, a distance of about two miles, for a little retail therapy. I rashly chose to adopt a kill-or-cure approach and joined her for the 4-mile round trip wander. Brave or foolhardy, I knew not. Though not entirely leak-free, I did make it without the damage being disturbing. Obviously I’d love to remain entirely dry but at least it seems that I’m beginning to be able to do the things I enjoy most, even if with a little remaining apprehension.

The main reason for the retail therapy trip was to purchase an SDHC memory card for the little Nikon Coolpix camera that came with the digiscoping kit purchased on Saturday. The camera had a small amount of “on-board” memory (32Mb, I think) but a card would really be needed once we started digiscoping uncooperative wildlife. As I found out with my first attempts, catching a reasonable shot, given the inherent slight delay combined with jittery targets, is largely a matter of luck. You really need to press the shutter a lot and discard the 90% of the shots that missed. For a massive £4, we snagged a 4Gb SDHC card that would enable us to press the shutter about 350 times.

We got back just before the heavens opened. [Ed: that’s 2½ days of sun this month.]

In a desperate attempt to find a saving grace for naff weather, I’ll suggest that it does tend to increase the bird activity in our garden. Today, now armed with a memory card as well as a shiny new digiscoping kit, I tried playing with my new acquisition again.

I don’t really like photographs of birds on feeders. I do occasionally take such shots to document what species visit us but I wouldn’t use them as anything approaching artistic. Today, however, I noticed that some of our feathered friends, mostly Great Tits (Parus major), were using the bare branches of one of Carol’s acers as a staging post before raiding our peanut feeder. The occasional Blue Tit (Parus caeruleus) alighted, too, but all attempts to snag one of them were in my 90% discards, unfortunately. I did, however, manage to beat the odds when a Robin (Erithacus rubecla) perched briefly allowing me to get off two shots, one of which was perfectly OK. The acer makes for a much more natural-looking setting than a feeder.

Now, I wonder how I can persuade our local Long-tailed Tits (Aegithalos caudatus) to use the acer as well?

I don’t think I can remember such a dull, grey winter as this. Since our early winter snows over the Christmas period, when we did at least have some cold, crisp, blue sky days, we seem to have had very little other than dank, dull, grey overcast days. Judging by the sodden nature of the ground, many of these days have also produced rain.

I have been somewhat trapped, certainly psychologically, because I haven’t been able to walk any great distance given my recent continence issue courtesy of the operation. So, whilst I might not like the weather we’ve been having, other than the psychological impact of not wanting to be stuck in this climate, it hasn’t actually been that restrictive for me.

For Carol, it’s been a different issue. I made it quite clear that she should not be trapped just because I was restricted but, as healthy as she is, the weather has just not been conducive to cycling, which we both enjoy. Cycling in inclement weather is not enjoyable, in our view. Walking in less than clement weather may be less dangerous than cycling but the weather’s been so dull that it hasn’t exactly enticed her out for walks, either.

Today was no exception; it wasn’t actually raining, unlike yesterday, but it was very dull and dismal. The frustration and lack of exercise was too much and the dam broke. Carol announced that she was going to walk into town, a distance of two miles, run a few errands and wander back. I felt jealous. “Come with me”, she said. Gulp! After a quick internal conflict of wanting to get out and worrying about leaking, I thought I’d try going and see how far I could get, accompanied by my trusty emergency stool/walking stick. I got dressed up.

As luck would have it, as we were leaving so was our neighbour, Paul. Together the three of us sauntered out in the general direction of town. Paul was intending to do a loop through a tree-lined path behind another development, a distance of about a mile or so, which sounded like a reasonable target for my first outing. And so it was – Carol strode off into town and we cut off through the trees. Apart from anything else, Paul’s company was a suitable distraction and acted as moral support taking my mind of any self doubt.

There were times when I didn’t feel exactly “secure” but I got back largely unsullied. I was thinking about things other than taking my trusty Garmin to measure our distance but I think it was a little over a mile (having measure it on Google Earth.

Result!!

Next significant event approaching: first post-operative blood test on Monday (28th Feb) with results expected on the following Friday (4th Mar).

The healing process related to the expected period of incontinence following a radical prostatectomy is a very strange one. I freely confess that I do not understand the mechanism(s) involved. Given that, during the two weeks immediately following my operation, my bladder’s sphincter muscle was clamped around a catheter pipe the diameter of which approached that of an HB pencil, I can easily see why there would be a (hopefully) temporary loss of continence but I don’t comprehend the restoration process.

Were I attempting to approach this medical issue logically, I would have thought that once the sphincter “remembered” how to close fully following its catheterial [Ed: new word coined] disturbance, that would be it – continence restored. I’d have been wrong.

Any movement towards the restoration of normality is very gradual. The process is so gradual that I haven’t noticed any change on a day to day basis. Actually, to be more accurate, I haven’t noticed improvement on a day to day basis. There have been days, though happily only about two or three, when I’ve noticed a deterioration giving me the unhappy feeling that my condition had regressed somewhat. Such days were low points mentally and it was difficult to remain positive. These didn’t last, though. I could attempt to blame alcohol which, if I remember my Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy correctly, is an effective muscle relaxant.

No, to detect an improvement it is necessary to think back one or two weeks.

The process began, immediately after having been sent home sans catheter, by my leaking whenever I was standing up. I’d leak my way to the loo. Certainly any jobs around the house, such as coffee making, had to be performed from the security of a bar stool.

The first noticeable milestone – well, yardstone [Ed: there’s another new word] – was managing to get to the loo, a distance of about 20ft/4m, without leaking. Getting out to the car, about twice that distance, was not possible without “a little accident”.

The next stage was noticing getting downstairs to the kitchen in the mornings, apparently cleanly, and that I now could make it to the car. As long as I didn’t overdo it, I could now stand for some of the coffee making process before having hurriedly to resume my perch on the bar stool.

Washing up is nobody’s idea of fun but, when hadn’t been able to do it, realizing that I now could stand at the sink and complete a small pile of washing up without my bar stool safety net was quite a thrill. “Yikes, I couldn’t have done that a week ago”, is the kind of phrase that spins through the mind.

Monday last week was one of those mercifully infrequent low days that I mentioned; having been making progress, I suddenly seemed to be leaking at the drop of a hat again, relatively. I’ve never regarded shopping for anything other than food and booze as an exciting pastime but, later that week, I had recovered from my bad day and found that I made it around IKEA with little in the way of trouble. It may not be a hike out in the open air but it’s a significant distance around that megastore. I was very pleased. (There is a section at the end of the tour selling Swedish foods so maybe that lessened the shock of shopping.)

Earlier this week Carol suggested a visit to our local Stockgrove Country Park. Gulp! “OK, I’ll take my portable seat and see how things go.” I’m delighted to say that they went surprisingly well. I had my seat but didn’t need to deploy it. I felt a little “insecure” once or twice but essentially made it from the car park, down to and around the lake and back. Joy!

Yesterday was something of a rarity: a pleasant day in February. Few people regard washing a car as fun and I haven’t been able to entertain the thought since I went into hospital on 1st December, 2010. I couldn’t resist it yesterday, though; I was feeling reasonably secure and the draw of being out in some sunshine doing something useful was too much to resist. I even went on to clear up some leaves around the garden. Gardening – arghh!

So, here I am eight weeks downstream and what seems to improve, and improve very gradually, is the length of time/distance that control can be maintained. I’m also happy to note that the control is not now a case of clamping the ol’ pelvic floor/Kegel muscles though, if I do feel a little insecurity setting in, a quick clench often seems to sort it out. Why this process should be so gradual, though, I don’t know.

I suspect that, at some time, I  may arrive at a point where I can go for a certain length walk but that I’ll then be able to keep going and not hit some invisible limit. Hopefully, the sphincter will not suddenly decide that it’s had enough and take a rest. When I am able to complete, say, a five mile walk, I’ll be overjoyed. At that point, I’ll be able to do pretty much everything that’s important to my lifestyle.