You have already taken the single most valuable step - reaching out (how I hate that Americanism but, in this instance, it seems entirely appropriate) to those who have already trodden this path. The PCUK website is undoubtedly the most comprehensive source of factual information for anyone embarking upon this journey, but the moral support and practical advice offered by members of this community, based upon their personal experience, is pure gold dust!
I am a 72-year-old widower, sadly without the support of my life partner, and have found decision-making regarding treatment options particularly difficult. However much research one may undertake, each patient journey, whilst perhaps not altogether unique, is impossible to foresee in detail: hospital pre-op and discharge information, however comprehensive, cannot encompass every eventuality. And few who compile such information will actually have been on the receiving end!
I am now 8 days post-RARP, performed at a teaching hospital a considerable distance from where I live. The process was pretty slick, I have to say, but not without its traps for the unwary. There were three patients from the same operating list in our 4-bed ward bay, which proved rather fortunate: the nursing staff, whilst unfailingly courteous and attentive, were somewhat difficult to understand: fortunately, as we were each able to overhear the discharge instructions offered to our two colleagues, we were subsequently able to derive a consensus interpretation about which we were all reasonably confident.
We were all released back into the wild the day following surgery. We were never able to discover why one of us was given an appointment to return for TWOC after a week, another after 10 days and myself after two weeks. Which brings me to my FIRST PIECE OF ADVICE: check that your partner is discharged with plumbing supplies sufficient to last until his catheter is removed. I was initially given only 10 single-use night bags (no drain tap, so impossible to re-use) for a 14-day period. Policies vary regarding the provision of incontinence disposables: a friend who lives 3 miles from me, but in a different county, had been discharged from hospital with more pads and pants than he knew what to do with, whilst I was merely directed to the nearest Tesco (out of stock, sadly!). A degree of leakage around the catheter appears to be inevitable, so do ensure that your partner takes some pads into hospital with him: it is so undignified to find oneself leaving evidence of one's presence along the hospital corridor or, in my case, on the taxi floor!
My SECOND PIECE OF ADVICE is to be prepared for the unexpected, that which nobody has warned you about, and ensure that you are clear as to whom to contact 24/7 when it arises; should you be advised, as was I, that your first port of call should be the District Nursing service, try not to laugh but insist upon being given the telephone number of an Urology Nurse Specialist or, if they work only 9-5, the Urology Ward which, in these uncertain times, may not the ward used for "green" elective surgical cases.
In my case, the first such event arose 3 days post-op, and took the form of frequent (at 3-minute intervals), painful badder spasms, accompanied by gross haematuria. No, nothing in my copious information pack about bladder spasms and, yes, it was late on a Friday afternoon! Three different voicemail greetings, promising a return call the following Monday morning, seemed of rather limited value. Fortunately, the GP Out-of-Hours service was eventually able to reassure me that I wasn't about to exsanguinate, and to advise that I should attend A&E at the hospital where the operation had been performed (far easier said than done!) if the issue hadn't resolved within a couple of days (which, after passing a large blood clot the following day, it did).
Today, my wound pain having more or less settled, I have been experiencing marked perineal pain such that I am far more comfortable standing than sitting, together with a feeling of having been kicked in the goolies by a large horse. Once again, no mention of this in my voluminous information pack, but a quick review of this forum was sufficient to reassure me that this was not an unusual phenomenon (albeit, it seems, one that I may need to get used to for a while).
Best wishes to your man!
David