Prime,
I chose to have a radical prostatectomy as I had the cancer in both sides of the prostate, at the time of my surgery the Da Vinci surgery was not on the scene, so this shows the progress made since 01 when I had my surgery. As far as anyone having surgery, best thing to do is start doing kagel exercises to help with incontinence as your prostate acts as a big stopper to shut your urine off etc and that area will be weakened as the prostate is removed.
Di Vinci is minimally evasive surgery with small portals and excellent recovery time with less side effects, they've gotton it down where basically it's like having your knee scoped. Several friends have had it and their recovery time was basically half time for those that had radical surgery.
With your age being 51 which is quite young, I think you'll recover excellent with robotic surgery, again if you have cancer in just one side of your prostate, then your already 50% better then I was from jump street.
As far a side effects go, my erections are 70% of what they were but, with the blue wonder pill and use of the vac I'm fine. Some very small leakage during heavy lifting but hell I'm alive.
Be sure to ask the urologist about your recovery time and if you can use a vacuum pump to aid in the recovery time so you can start to exercise your penis to get the blood flow back in the area which helps tremendously in the healing and firmness of your erections. Best of luck and feel free to hit me up if you need any questions answered personally.
For those diagnosed with the disease here is a excellent read: Dr. Patrick Walsh's Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer. He's head urologist for Johns Hopkins. Peace all.