Facing the Unknown and Finding Strength
There is something surreal about walking into a hospital knowing that when you wake up, a part of your body will be gone.
My radical prostatectomy wasn’t simply a medical procedure.
It represented hope.
Fear.
Loss.
Possibility.
And the belief that removing the prostate might remove the cancer with it.
Before surgery, you hear about recovery.
Catheters.
Pelvic-floor exercises.
Continence.
Sexual function.
Pain.
Walking.
Healing.
You can prepare for those things intellectually.
Living them is different.
Cancer treatment has a way of stripping away some of the privacy and independence we take for granted. Suddenly things you never imagined discussing become part of everyday conversation.
And through all of it, Sue was there.
That part of the story matters.
Cancer may happen inside one person’s body, but it reaches far beyond the patient.
There were days when I was frustrated.
Days when I was scared.
Days when progress felt too slow.
And there were moments when something small—walking a little farther, getting one tube removed, having a better day than the day before—felt like an enormous victory.
Recovery taught me to redefine progress.
Sometimes progress isn’t dramatic.
Sometimes progress is simply:
Today was a little better than yesterday.
But surgery also delivered information we weren’t expecting.
The final pathology showed that the cancer was more aggressive and more extensive than we had hoped.
Gleason 4+5=9.
Extension outside the prostate.
Seminal vesicle involvement.
Positive margins.
And cancer in a lymph node.
The cancer that imaging had appeared to suggest was contained had written a very different story under the microscope.
That was difficult to absorb.
We had crossed the surgery Mile Marker believing we might be approaching the end of treatment.
Instead, we discovered another road ahead.
That’s one of the hardest lessons cancer teaches:
Sometimes the thing you thought was the finish line is simply another Mile Marker.
So we adjusted.
We learned.
And we kept going.