The surgeon I had has done over 5000 procedures and is one of the top five guys in the US.
Plus he's really nice.
My urologist said that when he has to have the procedure, Dr Lee is the guy who's going to do it.

guys, get that prostate checked!

Men can check their own prostate with index finger.

Sure, the yearly visit to a professional urologist is highly recommended. However why wait a year for the cancer to grow? You can feel the same area of prostate which the trained professional's fingers can feel. A healthy prostate will feel smooth and pliable. If you feel any hard protrusions or hard lumps , get on the phone with your urologist.

Sorry, I thought you were alluding to something else. Sorry, my bad.

PSA is 0.0

12 cores were biopsied, only one showed a tiny bit of cancer. When the whole gland was checked after surgery the tumor was at an angle and it was luck that the one core nicked it. There were no nodules on the gland so all was good.

edit to add: It's funny I went into the prostatectomy without any kind of fear. In October I had a hernia repair and was dreading being anesthetized. Go figure.

I went home many times with them after bladder surgeries starting in 1995. They never, ever, let me relax. They were the larger diameter ones with an extra port for washing out my bladder. It has been 6-1/2 years since the last surgery (and I was discharged with no Foley that time!). I've been lucky and beat the odds.

I am glad you are doing so well.

Sorry, but I don't have a question.

Glad to hear you are doing better!

I was expecting more pain, but apart from a shot of Tramadol the night I was in hospital, the pain was managed with Tylenol. And the pain was significantly less than what I've experienced from gout attacks(which no longer occur thanks to meds). It was a bit like being hit across the gut with a two by four.
The Foley was just annoying, though sitting and watching TV without having to get up to pee was a small compensation.
I was walking the afternoon of the procedure, so that helped.
Speaking to an anesthesiologist before the op was interesting. He said that in some cases now they are sending people home the same day as they don't want you hanging around the hospital picking up the odd infection.
It's not something I'd want to do again, and because they got it all, I'm hoping that there will be no more visits to the OR.

That must have been terrifying to go through.

I was very confident in my surgical team and the hospital has a great rep.
I know that there is no such thing as 'routine surgery' but when I consider some of the stories I've heard, my procedure was a walk in the park. And the outcome would seem to be on the better end of the bell curve as regards urinary incontinence. Don't know about the ED yet, but that takes longer to heal, even with nerve sparing surgery (which my guy is apparently very good at).
I've been more scared driving in Philadelphia than I was going into surgery.

I had my gall bladder taken out laproscopically 10 years ago. My mother had hers out before they did lapro and she had a 4 inch scar. I had 3 half inch scars on my upper abdomen and a 1.5 inch scar below my naval. No stitches for any of it. Just surgical tape.

That one was maybe three to three and a half inches. There were a total of seven at various places across my lower abdomen. As you say, surgical tape but no stitches. There's still some discoloration at all of the sites, but it's going away.
They use the DaVinci machine, which I never saw, though I did photograph one a couple of years ago. Actually I may have seen it, but the anesthetic had probably started to hit so I don't remember.