All's well that ends well
I've been proctoring AP exams at the school for the past week and there are more to come. OMG, this is the worst. Since I'm the accommodations coordinator, I usually test the students with extended time and extra breaks and other things for whatever reasons. Extended time is the worst. And it's the worst for them as well. With paper & pencil tests we just let them go at the end when they finish because rarely do they use every single minute. With the digital exam, it's controlled by the computer. So right now I have two students sitting here with me in the archives waiting for 50 minutes to go by until they can submit their tests.
The last entry was about HeadBoy's cancer diagnosis.
He had the surgery on February 27. It took about 4 hours. The surgeon used the DaVinci robotic surgical device which apparently cuts down on the invasiveness. He spent one night in the hospital, but then experienced excrutiating referred pain in his shoulder (which the surgeon warned the staff about, but they didn't get the message. For this surgery, the patient is strapped to a table and is leaned back about 30deg; fluid backs up into the upper body and then when it's over, something happens with one of the major nerves that I can't remember and it feels like a hot knife in the shoulder. He had this pain for about a week.) Finally got him home late in the afternoon.
All in all, the pain has been minimal, with moments of bad pain. He was home for 2 weeks; the first week he was limited in activity because he had a catheter. Once he started teaching again, he'd come home wrecked and exhausted. He still gets tired easily even now, 10 weeks out. He's still learning how to control his pee flow, and sometimes he overflows his pee pad and wets his pants. He's been really frustrated at how slowly the recovery is going. But there is progress. He just doesn't realize it until suddenly, he realizes it. He can be quite negative, but he's been good about not expressing it around me.
I guess the biggest thing we've learned from all of this is that prostrate issues and prostate cancer is frighteningly common. Every guy he's talked to knows at least 2 other guys who have had it and had this surgery, and mostly, themselves. He's had a lot of support and I'm grateful for that.
So he's doing well; I haven't killed him.
The last entry was about HeadBoy's cancer diagnosis.
He had the surgery on February 27. It took about 4 hours. The surgeon used the DaVinci robotic surgical device which apparently cuts down on the invasiveness. He spent one night in the hospital, but then experienced excrutiating referred pain in his shoulder (which the surgeon warned the staff about, but they didn't get the message. For this surgery, the patient is strapped to a table and is leaned back about 30deg; fluid backs up into the upper body and then when it's over, something happens with one of the major nerves that I can't remember and it feels like a hot knife in the shoulder. He had this pain for about a week.) Finally got him home late in the afternoon.
All in all, the pain has been minimal, with moments of bad pain. He was home for 2 weeks; the first week he was limited in activity because he had a catheter. Once he started teaching again, he'd come home wrecked and exhausted. He still gets tired easily even now, 10 weeks out. He's still learning how to control his pee flow, and sometimes he overflows his pee pad and wets his pants. He's been really frustrated at how slowly the recovery is going. But there is progress. He just doesn't realize it until suddenly, he realizes it. He can be quite negative, but he's been good about not expressing it around me.
I guess the biggest thing we've learned from all of this is that prostrate issues and prostate cancer is frighteningly common. Every guy he's talked to knows at least 2 other guys who have had it and had this surgery, and mostly, themselves. He's had a lot of support and I'm grateful for that.
So he's doing well; I haven't killed him.