3rd post. Friday 9th March 2018 I attended princess grace hospital London and had a nanonife procedure done on my prostrate.
This was self funded as my insurer Aviva said that as nanonife is still considered experimental they initially would pay something towards the costs of the nanonife but that I would be excluded from claiming on anything to do with my prostrate in the future. Nuts They stated that if I self fund this experimental focussed surgery and excluded them from any associated costs then they would continue to cover me for any future prostrate problems. Bloody crazy.
So hospital £10,000 consultant £1000 anesthetist £540 post op MRI £1000 flights £750 hotel £750 taxis and various expenses £100. A grand total of £14,140
By doing this if the nanonife fails then I will still have many other options available to me via my insurance. Nanonife is good for me as it is not to intrusive and it has a very quick recovery with minimum side effects.
So here I am just a few days later back home and slowly recovering. The operation was easy as it is done under general anesthetic so you don’t know anything until you wake up afterwards. Total op time is one hour. I awoke with a catheter in place. (A new experience) I found the catheter to be very uncomfortable. I had a very urgent sensation to pee and this was painful. They gave me a morphine based sedative to elevate this and returned me to my room. After a couple of hours they were satisfied that I was passing water okay and I was discharged with anti inflammatory pain relief, a 5 day dose of antibiotics and some liquid mild laxatives. There was no way that I could have travelled home back to Glasgow the day of the op and my wife and I simply took a ten minute slow walk to our hotel. To say that I had problems with the catheter is an understatement. It had a manual valve ( no bag ) and it needed emptying every hour and a half. So not a lot of sleep what with the venting and then the cleaning and the constant uncomfortable strong irritation. The pain killers helped a bit but in truth I never want to go through it again. The catheter must stay in place for 2 to 3 days so we stayed in our hotel over the entire weekend. At times the catheter leaked and it was continually painful.
At last Monday came and I attended my consultants to have the dambed thing removed. Thank goodness that is out. Hated it. Muscle control returned immediately when it was taken out. I drank lots of water to prove to them that I could pass water under my own steam. And then off home. Easy trip nice flight and into my own bed. A great nights sleep as I only needed to get up once through the night.
4 days later and almost everything is back to normal. I have a very minor dull ache where the prostrate is. It stings to pee a little. But other than that I am 100% fitting fit.
Later this week I will return to London for my post op MRI scan and with that i will out how successful my nanonife op has been.
It really is amazing to me that the operation part of this procedure was so painless and with such an easy recovery, where as my big gripe in the catheter. I will post again with MRI results. If this works and the cancer is removed then I really hope that insurance companies take this procedure onboard as a viable treatment for prostrate cancer. Speak soon
