Road to Recovery
During the two nights I spent in the hospital, I turned responsibility for my well-being over to my doctors. For another week I had to remain in a Houston hotel until I was strong enough to travel. During that time, I depended on Laura for my care and feeding.
Abdominal surgery is traumatic, and I often found myself teary and depressed. Withdrawal from narcotic painkillers dampened my spirits. The emotional support Laura provided was critical.
St. Lukes is one of the world’s great hospitals and I was fortunate to have surgery done there. The entire procedure from pre-op to discharge was confidence-inspiring: professionalism, quality control, information management.
Just one example: In the seven years since I was last hospitalized, hospitals have switched to computerized patient charts. Nurses rolled carts bearing laptops into my room. They scanned my bar-coded wrist band, scanned labels on all medications, and entered vital signs right at bedside.
The carts are called COWs, for Computers on Wheels. Nurses hate them. Doctors and patients love them, as do hospital administrators and their lawyers. (I’m being cynical: meticulous procedures and record-keeping reduce wrong site surgeries and other tragedies.)
(A red duplex power outlet on a hallway wall labelled with a sign “Plug COWs Here,” mystified me until a nurse explained what it meant.)
Now that I’m home and past the early recovery stage, my comeback becomes entirely my responsibility. Fortunately, St. Lukes provided me with a handy guide.
The information contained in the booklet is useful, succinct and complete—obviously written by a medical professional. But as so often happens in corporate life, the communications department got hold of it, adding graphics that left me less informed than discouraged. The inanely happy model in the cover photo clearly has not had prostate cancer—at least not recently. Nor, I imagine, has the pamphlet designer who in all probability is a recent UT journalism grad named Tammy-Jean.
But I digress. My responsibilities today include lots of walking, kegel exercises, good nutrition, lots of rest, and maintaining a positive attitude. Finding energy to see friends is tough, but the encouragement they offer more than repays the effort.
I also call my surgeon’s office when I need to.
I’ll return to the gym in September. I’m planning a month of bus travel through Mexico in November. Each day is better than the previous one.
Over my 68 years I have survived four diseases, any one of which would have killed my grandfather: perforated colon, lodged kidney stone, heart attack, and now prostate cancer. In each case, I was saved by surgeons.
We live in an age of miracles.