A pause in my journey through the labyrinth of hospital corridors that lead to the operating theatre. I am lying on a trolly in an alcove outside “Operating Theatre 11” in the Wesley Hospital waiting to wheeled in for surgery. The surgery will, I believe, on my scale of experience, be about halfway between a quadruple heart bypass and a detached retina. As a stare at the blue curtain pulled around me listening to the quiet murmur of voices as people pass by to one of over 20 operating theatres in the hospital I am somewhat morbidly reminded of the MS Windows “Blue Screen of Death”. Great thought! Stop thinking! Perhaps a light green colour alternative? So how did I get here you may well ask?

As a gentleman of now somewhat more mature years, chronologically speaking of course, annual PSA tests for Prostate Cancer are de-rigueur. Earlier this year I seem to have crossed some threshold that led to a visit to a specialist who asked an interesting question “Do you want to know?” Given, from what I have read, Prostate Cancer is a slow developing cancer, then not unreasonable question if you think your life expectancy will be under 10 years. Whatever gave him that idea? Maybe doing nothing is an interesting approach, but I would like a little longer than 10 years, well quite a lot longer really, so here I am. Cancer has been identified in the prostate and I have decided, after a extensive research, to take the path of complete prostate removal. The decision process is interesting as one weighs up the various options. I think each of us in this situation has to go though that journey and come to our own conclusions. I have been lucky that I have met helpful people, both specialists and lay persons that enabled me to come to this decision. This will be a first for me in having robotic surgery. Will I be assimilated into the collective? Time will tell.

Seems like I alternate between long motorcycle adventures and surgery each year. A habit I must break going forward. While we have taken The Bird and The Bee to Cairns for the winter and been riding in Far North Queensland (FNQ) at weekends, that obviously does not count. So in 2025 we need a longer motorcycle trip to keep me out of the clutches of well meaning surgeons. Having tried cardiac, orthopaedic, ophthalmic and now urology surgeons I really should work on a new hobby, well more on that later.

A quick chat with the anaesthetist and I get the free catheter with every visit I am told. The surgeon arrives and I am patient number 2. Always good to have a warm up act on a Monday morning to get those surgeons fingers working on the keyboard. Hopefully we will not have any Control, ALT, DEL issues during the operation. Wheeled in, strange to see the surgeons sitting at a console some distance from the operating table, a few moments of lucidity then I am in recovery. One night in hospital and I am home. Probably safer away from all the bugs in hospital. No long stays anymore.

I had not undergone a biopsy to determine the levels of cancer as a biopsy pre prostate removal can impact my surgeons ability to undertake nerve sparing during the operation. I had a PSMA PET scan which confirmed cancer with over 95% certainty pre operation, but this test can only detect objects in excess of 4mm is my understanding. The surgeon advised that the cancer had already started to spread beyond the prostate but all cancer was removed. Impeccable timing. The prostate was the size of his fist. A post operative biopsy confirmed Gleason score of 7 with 4/3 mix with some additional 5’s on the Gleason scale in there somewhere.

Of course I was able to secure a couple of great photos from the helpful team operating on me but Anne has asked that I place a warning here. So “NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH” below.

Ok the bad stuff is over…..

An interesting couple of asides. Firstly while recovering at home and paying the various medical bills that seemed to arrive daily I roughly calculated that of the total cost of the operation we paid a little over 40%, the private health insurance paid a similar amount and the government through Medicare picked up around 15%. The choice of timing and surgeon though is worth the cost in my view. It is also interesting how much of what I considered part of the hospital such as pharmacy and imaging is separate and therefore not part of your hospital cover package. Worth reading the fine print of your policy.

Secondly I have also noticed that my post operative google searches on prostate removal seem to give higher percentage of negative outcomes on side effects than all the pre operation searches I did. Is AI already at work, in this case in the employ of medical profession to skew the search results in favour of their preferred options?

Just one night in hospital and I am out heading home, bag strapped to my leg to enter a long and slow recuperation. No motorcycling for 12 weeks – what will I do with my time?

Somehow amongst all this, I have acquired a “Ride On” 7 1/4 inch miniature steam locomotive weighing around 100kg / 220 lb! Seems one should not be left alone at home making decisions prior to surgery. Anne said when the message popped up on her phone “I have brought a steam locomotive” she just burst out laughing. I had always said that if I was ever to buy a locomotive to run at the miniature railway, it would be a battery operated one as I know next to nothing about steam locomotives. Well now I am going to be occupied during my recuperation.

– Anthony