Sandra is the nice nurse who removes the tubes. About ten days after the op you are invited back to hospital as an out patient to have the catheter and its limpet like apparatus removed. The art and act of peeing has been taken out of your hands and given to gravity and a sort of drip feed system that requires you to empty the plastic bag strapped to your calf between knee and ankle. You empty the bag by turning on the tap hidden at the bottom of your right trouser leg and by placing your right foot on the loo seat you can aim the flow in the right direction. I guess that the sound of the liquid splashing into the loo must trigger an automatic response from the bladder because right away you need to pee. You have already in the plastic bag, but the sound and proximity of the lavatory makes you want to go when you can’t. That’s painful. While we are on the subject, having a number two is a whole different ball game too. Years of doing what comes naturally requires a different set of rules and once you’ve done the number two (no easy task) the seemingly simple and automatic job that always follows, the release of a number one, turns into a painful battle of persuading the bladder that it need not try to follow suit. There’s a pipe attached to take away the need but sadly the brain hasn’t caught up with the new plumbing arrangements. Another painful struggle follows.
At night the bag attached to the leg is plugged into a bigger reservoir strung up on a cradle by the foot of the bed. The first time we forgot to close the tap at the bottom of the overnight bag and the new off white bedroom carpet sprung a patch the shade of claret not chosen in the carpet showroom.
You can shower with your tubes and bag in place, thank the Lord, and to be able to cleanse yourself daily with a decent hose down, the hot soapy water getting into all those places where the unmistakable smell of illness can linger if it isn’t washed away and might make you reek of incontinence, is a treat. To wash, actually shower, is a wonderful highlight of the morning and something that is taken for granted every day becomes a slice of birthday cake with an extra layer of icing on the top.
You are advised to drink lots. At least two litres a day and that doesn’t include tea, coffee or wine. So what goes down comes out and frequent trips to empty the bag are obligatory. An over absorbing episode of something enthralling on the tele can lead to a bulging bag with the resultant limping off to the nearest loo with a Zeppelin like swelling in your trousers desperate to be popped.
So on the Thursday, the first day of the golf Open at Sandwich, Sandra gets the pleasure of removing the apparatus. I’m there at 8.00 am with the letter and instructions to bring two sets of underwear and a change of trousers. Like the start of the Open, they’re obviously expecting some wet conditions.
It’s rather good striding back into the familiar urology department feeling like an old boy. No longer a place with uncertain nooks and crannies, I know my way around and take my seat in the drab waiting area like a regular arriving at his favourite restaurant.
Sandra and a colleague soon get to work. After a few questions as to how things have gone, I’m flat on my back with the two nurses hovering over me studying the area of the recent excavations. It must look something like Clapham Junction down there. The dressing that the local nurse changed once and my other half did twice is removed and the nurses cluck their delight over the cleanliness of the particular wound. Staring as they are at my tackle, there’s no comment or clucking about how good that looks. It obviously doesn’t. In a matter of fact way and with some comments about the bruising Sandra asks me to breathe in. As I then breathe out again she does something and pulls the tube from out of my penis with the sort of practised dexterity that my grandmother had threading a needle with cotton. The sensation is not painful but rather a tingling and a relief. It’s probably the sort of feeling a shot gun has when it’s being cleaned with a pull through. You think that it’s going to be the worst painful moment of all so far, worse than say a foreskin moment in a fly zipper, but actually it’s not. Funny how the imagination gets to us all. The tube might have gone but in its place, cello taped into the gusset of your underwear, is an absorbent pad, an NHS nappy, to mop up any leaks.
Being rid of the tube is better than shaking off an unwelcome chat up at a drinks party. You feel free but you’re not as far as Sandra is concerned until you’ve had at least two decent pees and another via the flow meter. The day room is the place you take your seat and drink yourself stupid. It’s hospital water with, if you so chose, a hint of lemon cordial and the occasional cup of tea. Unleashed from the tubes its time for you to claim back the control. Easier said than done. There is obviously a degree of nervousness that everything will return to previous pre-op working order. All you can do is drink and wait, wait and drink. The day room occupants are others just like you or those waiting for a bed so that in a week or so they too will be just like you. Those waiting for a procedure are not allowed to eat or drink so you feel better off than them but try not to gloat as you gulp back plastic glass after plastic glass of nourishing liquid.
“Time to give it a go,” says the bloke opposite me and he gets up with his cardboard bottle and heads to the nearest loo with a look of competitive advantage on his ruddy face. He’s gone for some time but reappears clutching the cardboard container as though it were an Oscar.
I keep drinking but nothing happens other than I’m beginning to hate the cheap brand of lemon cordial on offer. Sandra bustles in and out of the room just to check on her boy’s progress.
“All right dears”, she says. I’m nearly inclined to ask for a large vodka and tonic or a pint of best but don’t.
The Open is on the television but there’s only one golfing enthusiast in the room and the fact that the conditions on the Kent coast are pretty rough seem to make him feel more comfortable about his surgical appointment and where he is.
Suddenly I need to go. The jug and a half full of water tinged with lemon has caused an urgency that cannot be ignored. I too grab one of the two bottles Sandra has earmarked and named for me. I enter the small room, drop my trousers and with the sort of sensation that a swarm of angry wasps is trying to fight its way to freedom through my pathetic penis, I pass water or is it cut glass. It is painful. The triumph of the exercise is none the less something to write home about. I emerge from the loo with the result and rush off to find Sandra presenting her with the warm grey cardboard container as though it was a bunch of rare blooms. She looks very pleased and not at all like someone just taking the piss.
The second bottle follows soon after and is less painful but still makes the eyes water in sympathy and the language foul. The flow test which measures the strength of the passing water is a disaster. The painful dribbles barely reach the bottom of the measuring receptacle designed for the job. The volume of noise is disproportionate to the volume of pee and the effort to encourage a strong flow hurts like hell.
Sandra is persuaded to let me go however.
“It will get easier,” she promises and I believe her. “I’ve got your histopathology report,” she continues. “The results from the pathology laboratory on your prostate. You’re all clear.” She says and it’s the best news I’ve ever heard. I burst into tears. I need the proof and Sandra goes off to photocopy the three pages of A4 that confirm the surgeon and his team have in fact removed all the cancer with the prostate, leaving nothing behind except the marks and the discomfort which is a tiny price to pay.
After a whole morning and some emotional phone calls to those I love, I’m let out. I leave a box of Thornton’s finest for Sandra at the front desk and almost jump into the waiting car to be driven back home with my bag full of nappies. The sun is shinning and the first thing I do when I get home is to change into some shorts just because I can. No more unsightly extra curricular plumbing. We drink a glass or two of fine white burgundy and thank God for being the true saviour. Getting rid of cancer is one of the best feelings anybody can have. Ever.
It was at about ten the same evening that the pain got really bad. Peeing became more and more difficult and when the urge forced a visit, the pain became just awful. They didn’t say it would be anything like this. Paracetamol didn’t take the sting away and each time there was an urge to pee, I could only pass a few drops with plenty of chords of agony. For the second time that day I cried. This time though not tears of joy but tears that said please help me; I’m in a lot of pain. It’s not nice seeing anybody crying with obvious distress. It’s especially upsetting when the tears are your own and at over sixty years old you should be rough and tough enough to take pretty much everything life throws at you.
We gave it until about 3 am. The NHS help line told us to go to Shepton Mallet hospital where a doctor would let us in. My other half spoke to him while I knelt on the bedroom floor by the bed doubled up in pain and saying that this can’t be right. The good doctor wanted a sample of urine and at the next excruciating attempt I cried a few drops into a glass jam jar. We gathered up the disturbed seven year old who had never seen his father crying real tears and screaming in pain before. We drove to the hospital and the good Indian doctor let us in and took one look at the red jam in the jam jar and said “Good God” in an Indian sort of way. He gave me codeine phosphate and a strong antibiotic and we were back home as the birds started to sing and painful dawn broke around us.
The pain was still intense and at eight in the morning we set off to the RUH in Bath, the place where the prostate had been removed. Urology told us on the mobile that we should go straight to A&E. We did as we were told and Tina, the friendly A&E nurse plugged me in to a morphine drip which took that sting away. The registrar who’d been on hand for my op came down from his department and felt my gut, sensed the extended bladder which made me look as though I should be rushed off to the maternity ward at any minute. We should have called for an ambulance hours before. You don’t think about dialling 999 when it’s probably the most obvious short cut to the relief and help needed.
I was given another catheter, a fresh tube and bag, and sent off to a surgical ward somewhere in the big hospital. They kept me in for a day and a night and drained off all the painful and infected fluid before sending me once again on my way.
So I’m home, tubes back in place, taking strong anti biotic medicine and awaiting the next instalment. I’m fed up, uncomfortable and feel that someone has got me firmly by the balls especially when I try to sit down. Apart from that I’m cancer free but I want my chocolates back from Sandra.
I’ll keep you posted.
Way off, the sound of a telephone. The cobweb at the back of the mind trembles with its fine sticky silver lines quivering as though a trapped mite is struggling to escape from the frightful fangs of the eight legged marauder. Each frantic movement is sending a message to the grim hidden captor; every dreadful bug scream is a useless plea for help, a total waste of effort. The persistent alarm wails in monotonous urgency and gets louder. Ring ring. Ring ring. The chords screech down the wobbling, enticing, confused lines. In an instant of doubt and a trick played on the half witted, easily led semi consciousness, maybe the church bells from across the wooded parkland are being hammered by some trespassing somnambulist or perhaps it’s a front door summons by a hooded midnight rambler’s hard crooked finger pressed firm to the bell push or is it time for assembly somewhere, the signal that it’s time to move from here to there? Or from there to here of course with a neatly wrapped bundle. Sleep becomes drowsiness which then becomes urgency and the noise, the ring, is really a phone.
