There was another needle in my left hand that was used to draw blood. There was also another place on my wrist where they had apparently attempted an IV stick during surgery. They had apparently missed and there was a small amount of bruising on my arm that faded over the next couple of weeks.
For pain, there was a pump that would administer pain medication every time I pushed the button but not to exceed a certain amount. If I did not push the button, I did not get any pain medication. I quickly learned that I needed to push it about every 15 minutes initially. By the third day, I was pushing it much less frequently.
On the third day, my IV “infiltrated,” meaning that the fluids were no longer going into the vein but were going into the surrounding tissue. My arm began to swell. They were going to re-start the IV on the other hand. I questioned whether the IV needed to be re-started. They called the Dr. and got permission to switch me to oral pain killers and therefore not start a new IV.
Also in me when I woke up from surgery was a drain tube to the left of the incision. It had its own small incision, separate from the main incision and there was a bulb attached to it to collect fluids from the prostate area. The nurse emptied it two or three times a day. It contained fluid that looked like watery blood and the volume emptied by the nurse decreased each time she emptied it.
There was also a catheter in me. This is a tube that extends from the end of the penis into the bladder. It was anchored with a swivel pad to the inside of my right thigh (to prevent any undue stresses on the tube in case some one trips over it or it gets caught on something.)
From there it goes to a collection bag which must be emptied periodically. Initially, the urine output was somewhat bloody and sometimes contained clots. After a couple of days, it was less bloody and by the third day, it looked mostly like normal urine although maybe darker than usual. More about the catheter later.
The surgical incision, itself, ran from just left of my belly button to about 2 inches above the top of my penis. It was closed with staples and covered with layers of gauze. It was taped in such a way as to bind it together to reduce movement.
My testicles and penis appeared bruised after the surgery but the D