Texas for Surgery - Feb 2025

After a fun week in the Dominican Republic with John and JoAnna, it was time to be back in Texas and face the music - Keith's prostate surgery.

Keith had been diagnosed in the fall of '24, and after doing all the research we landed on a surgeon at UT Southwestern in Dallas.  He had several selling points:  done ~2800 of the surgeries, provided the best explanation of our options, used a suprapubic (rather than traditional) catheter, and enabled us to still do the Antarctica trip to boot!  The surgery was scheduled for Monday, Feb 17 at 3pm.  We checked in at 1pm - some of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra were playing in the lobby!  This must be an expensive operation!  Keith was brought to pre-op promptly at 1.  All the various doctors stopped by, ensuring Keith was indeed checked in for a radical prostatectomy.  

Pre-Op - Keith in his 'big bird' outfit

He was wheeled into the Operating Room at 3, and was given a "tour" of the place - including the friendly neighborhood DaVinci robot that would be doing the actual cutting.  It was all impressive.  Finally, the anesthesiologist handed Keith the syringe so he could knock himself out, which was pretty cool. During the surgery, Keith was laying at a 45 degree angle with his head towards the floor - this was to help get other organs out of the way.  We were told this would happen before the surgery as they wanted to let Shawna know that his face would be swollen when he came out of surgery.  

Keith woke up 5 hours later (after the 4 hour surgery plus recovery).  The doctor had told Shawna that everything went well and he was "cautiously optimistic".  Good enough for us!  The hospital encouraged Shawna to stay the night in the room with Keith - presumably to provide free nursing.  We were woken up every hour or so for someone to check on us and vitals so it was a restless night.  At about midnight, Keith's shoulder started hurting.  We were told it was from the CO2 gas in the surgery.  The next 30 hours were excruciating - so brutal.  But Keith woke up Wed morning at 6am with 99% of that pain gone.

Post-Op - walking the halls

The rest of week one recovery was shockingly good.  Keith basically felt 95% fine from Wed morning on.  He was still bloated from the gas, but was able to walk an hour or so a day which the Dr said would help with the gas (he was right).  Nights were quite restless as Keith had to sleep on his back, but overall the recovery FAR exceeded expectations.

One week from the surgery, we went to see a nurse to have the catheter removed - super easy - and then just drove on to Louisiana.  The same morning we received the pathology results via the portal and if our layman interpretation is correct, Keith seems in the clear!  We'll find out for sure when Keith meets the Dr in another week.  

We were able have a bit of fun during the surgery week.  Peter came over for dinner at the house on the Thursday night - Shawna made pasta and Peter brought potato skins for an appetizer.  We had a dinner/movie date night where we ate at Mexican Sugar - food was pretty good but restaurant is quite noisy.  Margaret, her kids, and Lily came over for dinner on Sunday when Shawna made Indian for everyone and sautéed apples with ice cream for dessert.  

Dinner at the Dodds' Casa