Post surgery appointment (10 days). Pulling staples and stints.

Ten days after surgery and 3 days after going home I met again with my surgeon.

• remove staples and apply steri-strips.
• remove stints that have been draining kidneys since surgery. 
• check progress.
• talk about the surgery.

Stints: 
During the surgery they place stints in the ureters that lead from each kidney and are attached to the new bladder (neo-bladder). They run these through the neo-bladder and out the stoma to drain into that bag. They're about the size of the stir straws in mixed drinks (only flexible). Surgeon pulled these out (a little tug feeling) and now the kidneys will drain directly into the neo-bladder for the first time.

Staples:
The nurse removed the staples and placed steri-strips across any holes remaining. For the most part this didn't hurt at all. It stung on a couple but no more than a large mosquito. She said the area's still a little numb from the surgery - which helps. There were 16 total.

Report: 
Surgeon is young who obviously loves his work and takes great pride in it. He has a great smile and bedside maner. He was ebulant about my particular surgery. He said everything went great and there were no surprises or problems. He gave me a print out of the pathology report that, I am very pleased to say, completely validated the diagnosis of the urology and onocology team at Dean/St. Mary's.  And he noted that in my case he was able to clearly see the nerves that went around the (removed) bladder and prostate that lead to my penis which control erections. He said this allowed him to spare these so I would still be able to have erections (once catheter is removed) and enjoy sex. We'll see how that goes.