It has been a few months since I last blogged. Back in March I blogged about an antibiotic that nearly killed me. In that blog I mentioned that my PSA levels went up and I was being treated for a prostate infection. Following a number of months of taking antibiotics, my PSA level kept going in the wrong direction. To make a long story short, a second biopsy was done and found cancer. So I've been battling cancer for awhile. I had surgery a month ago to remove the cancer and I'm now pretty much recovered from the surgery. It will take several months of additional testing to verify if I'm cancer free now (technically known as being in remission). Anyway, I'm just getting around to writing again.
I won't bore you with the details of the cancer itself but being a science minded person, I was amazed at how the surgery was performed. I was operated on by a robot. The robot performed the entire surgery under the control of the surgeon, who sat across the operating room sitting at a rather impressive console that might be best described as an oversized 3D game box complete with joysticks. Called the Da Vinci robotic surgery system, it is incredibly more accurate than traditional surgery. In my case, my surgeon performed a five hour nerve sparing procedure that required very high precision - much higher precision than possible with traditional surgery. Basically the robotic system uses several small cameras placed inside the body which magnify the view many times. The robot arms (there's four of them) reduce the surgeon's hand movements by a ratio as high as 20:1 and filter out any sudden movements or hand shake, giving the surgeon an unprecedented view and incredible precision. The surgery is performed through several small incisions very much like a laparoscopic procedure. Now four weeks later, I'm on my feet, working a full schedule, and even back to jogging.