Recovering Continence Post-RP

daveshan said...

questionsaboutit said...


I find humiliation to be a major part of PCa.

Sooo true. My Uro' is 33, 5'1" tall and cute, (don't let the 33 fool you she graduated Med' school at 23) all I can say is there are times I'm glad for a bit of ED ;-)

LOL - humor is good.

I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. Cath came out and I was able to hold my urination. I did leak every now and then. These days I'm down to 2 pads a day. I don't leak at night. I sleep doubt 5 hrs before I need to urinate. This week I only had 2-3 or times when I leaked. I still wear a pad for the feeling of security. Now Ed is another story. The only thing close to an erection happened while doing a bowel movement. My biggest worry before the operation was having to wear a diaper the rest of my life. If I never have another erection I can live with it.

I have measuring the amount my bladder holds. If, or rather, I wake up during night I usually void about 200 ml. Sometimes a little more, but usually two to three times a night. During the day I am doing good at 90 ml. I believe the bladder can hold 300 or 400 ml.  However, I have found that during the night I remain pretty dry. Whereas, as the day progresses it seems to leak or dribble more. Until late evening when it is not so bad. I had Davinci on September 8, 2010.  Even though it has been a long journey, with further to go, I am hopeful it will work out to some form of normalcy. I guess patience is the main ingredient.

UR surgeon told me to Kiegle 3 or 4 times a day.

Yes, you must leave your modesty at the door when you have PC. 

Mr. Bill

I'm with Goodlife - you have to stretch it out. If you are mostly continent at night stretch out your bladder by drinking water before bed. If you get up at night to pee, drink another glass of water. I slept on a blue pad just in case but didn't need it.
My morning pee can be as much as 400 ml now. During the day it just dribbles out so 80 ml is typical.
Jeff

Post Edited (Worried Guy) : 11/21/2010 9:07:01 AM (GMT-7)

Don't think I've mentioned this before--when I was first told how to do kegels, I think I misunderstood. So, instead of squeezing and holding, I would just squeeze and let go. Started a couple weeks before surgery, and gradually got up to over 100 squeezes per day. Maybe I was just lucky, but even though I was doing things "wrong", it worked for me. Very little leakage from the beginning.

But that giving up modesty is so true. I feel lucky that all my female nurses have been middle aged or older.

DJ

I thought I was the only one measuring my urine output. Nice to see someone else doing that as well. A lot of you are still fairly fresh out from surgery. I had my open RP on July 20, 2010. Cath out 9 days later and went home drinking an ice tea. My first lesson was finding out just how much my pad could hold and I can assure you a Depends pad cannot hold 20 oz of ice tea.

I remained on a 3 to 5 pad per day schedule for several weeks. My real test came 3 weeks after I returned to work. I got "training wheels" by being getting permission to park at work for the first 3 weeks. So from the car to the bathroom was a short walk, leaking all the way. Quickly again to my desk where I remained glued to it only venturing off to go to the bathroom. For the first week back to work changed pads at work around 2 pm, a few weeks after I changed pads upon arriving back at home. Pads fairly full at around 160 cc. After 3 weeks I took a commuter train to work and had to walk a mile from the train station to my office. Walking started in late September and it was a slow dribble all the way to the office. Kept fluid intake down until I got to work so I would not gush. After a few weeks of walking I noticed that I only leaked when I started walking again after stopping for a traffic light and then it was a steady small dripping. I think real progress came in October when I noticed that I could stand and very gingerly walk around without leaking profusely. However any sudden movement would cause a spurt.

Right now, I leak a bit while walking. It still feel like a lot but when I weight my pad at the end of the day the total accumulation is going down. Sometimes I think the urine evaporates while I am sitting so it reduces the pad weight. However, that should have been happening every day while wearing the pads so the potential loss by evaporation should be a constant. Don' know how tenacious the gel in the pads are for locking in fluid.

So my measurable progress has been when I have worn a pad for the same period of time and done the same activities during the day. So my pad progress has been wearing them from 6:30 am to 7:30 pm during a typical work day with lots of sitting and 2 miles of walking to commute. My results are Sept 15th - 196 cc, Oct 15th - 96 cc, and Nov 15th - 43 cc. It is going slowly but the downward trend is apparent.

One of my concerns right now is that while I don't leak when sitting unless I twist around and I don't leak too much when standing and am usually dry at night with the exception of a few cc of fluid I think I leak when walking to the bathroom at night to void. Sometimes when I drink too close to bedtime, I sleep soundly enough that I think I leak quite a bit before waking up to urinate. I hold a lot of fluid in my body and it sure likes to come out at 3:00 am or so. Usually void about 200 cc, but have retained as much as 300 to a record 500 cc when the urge to go has woken me up. Anything beyond 200 cc retention is a leak festival before getting to the bathroom. I am nowhere near ready to sleep padless as some proclaim to do fairly early. Is having the progress I am having but having occasional wet pads at night a common thing?

Thanks

Mike

The one constant in regaining continence seems to be that there is no constant; some get it back suddenly, some gradually. Incontinence was by far the most unpleasant part of recovery from surgery for me. I soaked 12 to 14 large pads per day worn inside of a depends until July of this year (5 months post surgery,) when things abruptly improved. I still have to wear one pad per day on my job that involves a high level of activity, but this seems like heaven to the hell of changing a soaked pad every hour early on. To those who feel like it is not going to get better (I felt like that for a while,) it usually does. I agree strongly with those who suggested that you not let the incontinence keep you from living and doing the things that make life enjoyable. Even if you have to be well padded, be active, visit family, etc. Don`t let the leaking rob you of good times. We all need some of that with what we are going through.