I don't want to scare you as to what you have experienced so far, but
to alert you to a possible event so that you might seek treatment
sooner in the case of something more serious.

I had instant and extreme pain.  The only way to stop the pain was to
hold my breath.  I thought someone had shot me in my right-front
ribcage and was looking for a bullet hole in the window next to my
chair.

I had been in my recliner watching my granddaughter play in front of
the fireplace on Saturday afternoon.  When the pain hit, I thought that
I had been lying up too much and tried walking for a while.  I took
some Advil and was able to relax and sleep some.

I had planned to return to work on the following Monday and had made a
trial run to the office Thursday night to make sure that I could make
it OK and to clear voice- and e-mail messages.

I called both the urologist who performed the surgery and my PCP.  The
urologist returned my call first and ordered a CT scan of my abdomen.
He called in a prescription for some heavy-duty painkiller, but it did
not help very much.

When the urologist who performed the surgery got report on the CT scan,
he called to say that there was not a problem in the area of the
surgery, but directed me to see my PCP or a pulmonary specialist
because he thought he could see something in the scan that the called a
pulmonary effusion.

My wife took me to our night clinic, but they had just closed, so we
went on to the local ER.  It was SRO, but I did get a chest x-ray at
some point, but after 2 hours, I told my wife to take me home that I
could not stand it any more.

I sat in my recliner through the night trying not to breathe because of
the pain.

The next morning, we went to my PCP's office.  He had a copy of the
x-ray from the previous night.  We were sent directly to get another CT
scan, which was focused on my chest.

Instead of going home from there, we went back to my PCP's office.  As
soon as we got there, we were sent back to get another CT scan of the
area previously indicated as a pulmonary effusion.

When the scan was finished, the radiologist told us to wait while he
talked to my PCP.  I got another scan after that, which turned out to
be a spiral or helical scan.  I don't recall which one.

We went back to the PCP's office, and when we got there, he was working
on papers for us to go to the hospital.  He told us to go to a specific
room, not through admitting or anything else.

The pain was still unbelievable.

When I got to the hospital room, I was immediately given
low-molecular-weight heparin (LOVENOX®) injections and the pain
disappeared.  I then underwent sonograms to check for DVT and started
on Coumadin, another anti-coagulant.

Ref.:  "Low-Molecular-Weight Heparin versus a Coumarin for the
Prevention of Recurrent Venous Thromboembolism in Patients with
Cancer", The New England Journal of Medicine
  <http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/349/2/146>

After three days, I checked out of the hospital, which was on
Valentine's Day.  The discharge form indicated a diagnosis of PE.  I
asked the nurse what "PE" meant because I was not familiar with the
term.  That was the first that I knew of PE.

I have learned a lot since then.

DW

No lymph node involvement,
Positive margins,
PSA became detectable in January 2005,
March PSA = 0.2