Steven Hess's Page

Nearly a year to the day of my RRP (Post-op pathology Gleason 9=4+5, small tumor, localized, encapusulated). It has been quite a trip as it has for most of the PCa patients on this site and their "traveling companions"

Last night Sarah (Sarah Atkinson, MD) and I went back to the small Italian restaurant we visited just before surgery and where I had impulsively proposed to her over pizza. We had gone there because pizza is my antidepressent of choice and I needed that badly at that time.

Surgery was uneventful other than the most unwelcome upgrade to the Gleason. That was, however largely offset by the the small size of the tumor mass and the fact that it had stayed put. I will forever be grateful to my wife who dismissed any "take your time" arguments and had me on my way to the OR just as fast as scheduling allowed; even faster because she called in all the favors she could.

Sarah now draws blood at the end of each quarter and gets both standard and ultrasensitive assays at the same time. My surgeon only sends a lab request for standard post-op PSA on the theory that you wouldn't do anything about it any way until it rises to about 0.2. Sarah, on the other hand, likes that early warning system of the ultra sensitive test even if you might not treat at those levels. My tests have been consistently
undetectible but, interestingly, the local lab has now started reporting the standard test to two decimal places and it was a "0.03" but the ultrasensitive test from the same blood draw but shipped by them to another lab was "<0.01" Sarah called the labs and had the usual "noise" and "tolerance" discussion with basically everyone agreeing to ignoring that difference.

Incontinence improved from post-op "soaking" to 95% "dry" within about half a year but it never made it to 100%. I wear one pad all day against the occasional small squirt and have just accepted that as the price for becoming an old fart who had PCa.. Annoying but no big deal. I gave up on Kegels quickly simply out of a lack of personal discipline. I have always hated sports and anything remotely connected to that, and to me this was just another variation of "exercise" Not a good thing, I know.

ED was (is) a much more difficult struggle because now we're talking about sex and that I do care about. I had some ED issues pre-op which were taken care of with the magic blue pill but post-op has been a depressing problem. I first played around with a VED, thought it was helping but came to the conclusion that it was not a solution for me. After several month's
during which the "fear" of injections was gradually overwhelmed by the voice of "desire" I finally clenched my teeth and got a scrip for Trimix. Not perfect, not very "romantic," certainly not spontaneous but the stuff works and that's what counts when it counts.

Sarah and I are delighted that (with my "9") we have passed the one-year mark with no sign of recurrence. The next major milepost, she says is 18 months.

I am appreciative of many things, not the the least is this site that answered so many questions, especially in those awful early months.