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After much waiting and pestering the doctors office, I finally got a call this afternoon to set a date for surgery! :balsmilie

I get on September 26th so the countdown starts now!

clapper:clapper::ba lsmilie

I'm looking forward to switching my handle from WheelyCurious to WheelyFixed!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations! That's great news.

Congratulations.

Hope it all goes well for you, and the results are what you want.

Thinking of you!

Good luck with that

Good luch and the best to you. You're already and inspiration.

WheelyCurious wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2023 6:34 am After much waiting and pestering the doctors office, I finally got a call this afternoon to set a date for surgery! :balsmilie

I get on September 26th so the countdown starts now!

Congrats!

How fixed are you going to be getting? My memory is horrible these days and I can't remember which procedure you're specifically going for.

Thanks for all the well wishes... I how have to go through all the procedures the hospital requires for getting ready, but hopefully that won't be a huge problem... Starts next week when I have virtual visits w/ the nurse-practitioner and the anesthesia people, and then will depend on what else they want for tests and such before hand...

As a reminder, and since LT asked, I'm going for an orchie and scrotum job primarily, and hopefully whatever they can do to make the penis a bit less buried so it is easier to reach for catheterizing... I definitely don't want the penectomy and re-route approach because that would make cathing more of a pain... (I have a female friend w/ a similar level SCI, and she says the only time she has ever had "Penis Envy" was when she landed in rehab and the nurse came to give her the dreaded "How to Cath" lessons...) I'm not crazy about the penis, but it's useful... However I wouldn't mind if they wanted to chop it off and replace it w/ something from F.W. Webb (big local plumbing fixture supplier)

WheelyCurious

WheelyCurious wrote: Wed Aug 02, 2023 3:52 am However I wouldn't mind if they wanted to chop it off and replace it w/ something from F.W. Webb (big local plumbing fixture supplier)

WheelyCurious

Why not a firehose?

Seems like a long time still, but that day will be here before you know it. Congrats and good luck.

Why not a firehose?

I'm pretty sure F.W. Webb carries those, or at least the valve https://www.fwwebb.com/product/Fire-Pro ... -00/252973

WheelyCurious

I know that Wheely is already taken, but when I first read this headline, I had to laugh at the "finally got a date."

Slight delay... I had a conflicting event w/ the initially scheduled pre-op virtual visits, so had to reschedule one of them... When the hospital rescheduled, it pushed them both forward quite a bit, and said that their rules required the visits be at least 30 days in advance of the surgery, so they moved the date from Sept 26th to the 28th....

Annoying... Two days isn't a huge deal, except that I normally do a volunteer desk shift at the maker-space on Monday nights... From what folks have said about recovery times, I had been planning that w/ surgery on Tuesday I'd have 6 days to recover and probably would be able to do my shift... With only 4 days, it seems less likely, but will have to see....

WheelyCurious

Congrats! Not sure what your pain tolerance is, but I would give yourself atleast a week to recover mentally as well as physically.

Thanks... The volunteer shift is not terribly difficult - mostly sitting behind the desk (I'm USED to sitting...) and dealing with questions in person / email, signing in students etc... Occasionally taking visitors around on tours, so not a big deal... I can skip it if I have to but figure there would be less questions if I could make it... Otherwise I will stay home and mostly in bed...

I plan for major food shopping beforehand so that I won't have to do that for as long as possible before needing to do it again.

My pain tolerance is mostly pretty high - between various stuff related to my injury I live at about a 3 out of 10 as a pretty much baseline, w/o drugs... The surgeon says that most of his patients do fine w/ just standard OTC painkillers, which is good because I want NOTHING to do w/ opioids...

WheelyCurious

Wheely, four days to recover is very little!

You will need to move less, for at least two weeks you should not be distracted by different trips, but it is better to postpone them for a month.

It is strictly necessary to control blood pressure for at least two months!

(By the way, medical devices "do not like" at the time of measuring pressure the presence of radiation from smartphones nearby, etc.)

Of course, you may be bored, but it is desirable that your social activities that disturb your inner peace be temporarily limited.

(Of course, this is my personal opinion based on my own experience only.)

Valery_V (imported) wrote: Sun Aug 06, 2023 12:07 pm Wheely, four days to recover is very little!

You will need to move less, for at least two weeks you should not be distracted by different trips, but it is better to postpone them for a month.

It is strictly necessary to control blood pressure for at least two months!

(By the way, medical devices "do not like" at the time of measuring pressure the presence of radiation from smartphones nearby, etc.)

Of course, you may be bored, but it is desirable that your social activities that disturb your inner peace be temporarily limited.

(Of course, this is my personal opinion based on my own experience only.)

Thanks for the advice Valery, I'm definitely planning to avoid heavy activity for several weeks, but I don't have the same concerns w/ walking and standing that most have, so it almost seems like there wouldn't be a lot of difference between sitting at home and sitting at the maker-space... Driving also seems like less of an issue since I have to use hand-controls...

It may also make a difference that I'm not getting a penectomy, (I believe that is what you had?) so not quite as severe a surgery.

WheelyCurious

You have a very serious operation!

(In my case: I was somewhat younger at the time, and yet I was under medical supervision.)

For me, standing wasn't a problem. It was sitting. My first 48 hours was laying in bed. I didn't sit straight for about 2 weeks. You do know your body better then any of us, we are just giving reasons based on experience.

justapup (imported) wrote: Mon Aug 07, 2023 1:15 am For me, standing wasn't a problem. It was sitting. My first 48 hours was laying in bed. I didn't sit straight for about 2 weeks. You do know your body better then any of us, we are just giving reasons based on experience.

Believe me, I'm not arguing, and I do appreciate the advice and wisdom from those of you who have already gone through this...

I'm also a bit of an odd case given my disability (which includes somewhat less pain sensation - I once broke my femur and went around with it for 3 days thinking it was just a bad sprain - and probably would have gone longer except that I'd had a routine Dr's appointment by chance where they asked if I'd had any recent falls...) which means I have a different set of daily activities than you walky sorts...

At the same time my surgeon is telling me that it is not a huge deal and claims to have done a lot of orchies... It is a little bit inconsistent w/ my doc at the TG center who says I'm her first M->E patient, but I know that some M->F types do the orchie as an intermediate step to help w/ making the hormone management easier, and of course the full transition surgery also gets rid of the balls... I know the surgeon is the specialist that does all the gender surgeries at the hospital so he probably also gets to do the prostate cancer cases...

Among other things he says current technique doesn't even use stitches, just 'surgical glue'. MGH is also a major teaching / research hospital, so tends to be using the 'latest and greatest' techniques and equipment....

Not the same thing, but a few years back I had carpal tunnel surgery... The folks at one of the SCI support sites said I'd have several weeks of non-load bearing recovery time... The surgeon for that said that was only with the older methods - he did the robotic assisted minimally invasive approach and had had patients that were pumping iron a couple of hours after surgery... I know I was doing necessary transfers right after, and the only problem I had was cathing that afternoon because it's hard to manipulate things when one hand is still mostly numb from the anesthetic...

At any rate I can pretty much take it as it comes as I don't have any definite 'absolutely can't skip' commitments for a couple of weeks and that one is pretty minor...

Ahh, yeah. You make very good points. Wishing you the best and for smooth sailing.

More slow progress... Since I'm not going to be allowed to drive home from the hospital after getting and the GF is no longer allowed to drive, I have to do extra stuff to get transportation, fortunately covered by my insurance... Usually this is done by a paratransit service, but the hospital doesn't allow this after procedures w/ anesthesia, so I need to go through extra hoops to get an actual "Chair Car" from an ambulance service...

I called my primary care Doc's office to ask them to start the process of setting this up, and they got back to me today - according to the current schedule I am supposed to get to Pre-op by 7:45 am, and go to surgery at 9:45..

This may change, but currently nails the schedule down more...

WheelyCurious

More minor progress... Had a bone density scan a few hours ago, which will give me a baseline of sorts - hopefully it will be about the same as it was the last time, which wasn't great but was somewhat OK....

I also dropped off a sample for a urinalysis which they wanted me to do before my urodynamics and cystoscopy next week - hopefully they will find a cause and something they can do to help w/ my leakage issues...

WheelyCurious