Jed Wolf

We arrived at outpatient surgery around 11:30. By noon I was butt naked in a Johnny coat fiddling with my phone while Dave perused science magazines he’d brought to kill time.

The weight of the last month was relieved. Finally, I was about to have the dreaded surgery. I’d fasted, enima’d, had an annoying headache from a caffeine-less morning and had to pee as usual. I’d researched “prostate biopsy” and knew they’d be taking samples to examine the leisions on it for cancer.

Apparently this surgeon who I met once for two minutes behind a mask had his preference for how he like to “go in.” No point in questioning him if he showed up, about why he chose to go through my perineum which I heard would be painful for days after. Friends freely informed me about what befell or otherwise their friends and how preferable the procedure was through the rectum. It was unclear if my urologist would even make an appearance as my imagination ran laps.

Episodes of the Match Game and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory droned on in the background TV while we waited for SIX hours, until finally we switched to a 70’s love scene between scantily clad Greek warriors. I was imagining their bulging pecs, thighs and décolletage in caskets or up in smoke by now when another nurse walked in. “More shit to sign,” I asked?

“Sorry about the wait. Are you ready baby,” she said as she attached blow up suspension straps to my calves.

I smirked behind my mask as she kept a conversation going with Dave. At some point she said I might go home with a cathater. “Am I gonna see the doc,” I asked. “Sometimes he pops in at the last minute,” she said as she left to fetch him.

They were taking my vitals and hooking me up to an IV when my masked urologist burst in. I didn’t recognize him but told him I had a few questions. “Shoot,” he said glancing between me and the Match Game.

“If you find cancer…” “Whoah partner. Jump the gun much?,” he interrupted. I anxiously said, “look doc, I don’t know where to get facts. I’ve googled conflicting information about treatments and procedures. People are telling me all kinds of shit. I can hardly pee even with the drugs you prescribed and can’t get erections. Whether or not there’s cancer, can you tell me anything?”

“At your age, radiation treatments have side effects and will not shrink your prostate. We might just remove it completely. There’s a chance you’ll be incontinent. You’ll never cum again and need Viagra to get it up. Anything else?”

“When will I know the results of the biopsy?” “If there’s no cancer we’ll call you in a couple days. If there’s cancer, we prefer to tell you in person at your follow up appointment.”

Then in waltzed the anesthesiologists, who everyone kept telling me were “great.” “Probably because if anything happens, they’re liable,” I thought as they smarmilly introduced themselves. They made intense eye contact but behind their masks looked like grin reapers. “I feel like I’m delivering Rosemary’s Baby,” I muttered as they wheeled me away from Dave.

The gloomy operating room with its high walls and ceiling packed with machines, tubes and chords was a Mel Brooks stage set. They had me haul myself onto the operating table and position my bare ass above a drain. Then they attached straps to my legs, put a mask over my face and the next thing I heard was Gene Wilder singing, “Pure Imagination.”

When my eyes popped open back in my room, I had to pee desperately. Dave helped me get enough IV tube slack and I wobbled to the bathroom and stood there dripping blood into the toilet. “He won’t be needing a catheter,” the nurse quipped as she handed Dave antibiotics and Oxycodone. “They took 25 biopsies.”

It’s been four days. Besides a constant ache – like holding back a fart for days, peeing is the most painful part. It was excruciating at first in my urethra which was sore from the catheter during surgery. Now, in addition to the fart feeling, it feels like there’s a tight rubber band being unwillingly stretched below the weight of my urine filled bladder. Once enough bloody piss drips out, though I have the strong urge to continue, I can no longer pee. 15 minutes later a little more trickles out and this goes on all day long and through the night. There’s blood on my sheets. I put tissue in my underwear when I go out. Dave bought some sort of pads I refuse to even discuss.

The surgery was last Wednesday. I vainly hoped to hear good news on Friday and will today and Tuesday I suppose. My ominous follow up appointment is not until Friday.

Covid prepared everyone in different ways for different things and I’m grateful it prepped me a little emotionally to face this. Even without cancer, something must be done about my enlarged prostate.

My vision was always blurry but now, gazing back at life through a narrow constricted lense, I snap at friends for offering advice or prayers.

I felt particularly pitiful this weekend. “What’s the point in lifting weights,” I thought as the dumbbells hit the ground and the cat ran off.

A nor’easter has howled outside for days. Three podocarpus sit in their containers by my back door and two salvia lay blown over in 4” pots out front.

Time to get up. I’ll have a sip of coffee, grab a few tissues then head off to a sales call humming “Oompa Loompa,” wondering when I’ll feel like gardening again.