New Member-Recent Surgery

Hello to All. This is my first post here. Just joined.

Just had a robotic radical prostatectomy on March 5, 2014. Operation lasted a little over 6 hours, but resulted in very little pain or blood loss, and no post operative infection.

I haven't made much progress with controlling incontinence in 7 weeks.

Can anyone offer any specific or detailed exercises, or processes I can do/use to get this under control?

Thanks for any responses.

Regards.

Hi

Welcome to HW forum...

Yes...walking, drinking pain water and "kegal" likely to help you for incontinence prob... thou some may take " a while" to recover.

All the best to your recovery.......

Thanks YK, Tdubb, and In the Shop.

I actually started the Kegel exercises, after the catheter removal, but became lazy. I also have not done much walking. I will resume the Kegel's and walking in the morning.

I was wondering if there was anything else I should be doing.

I really appreciate your replies.

Regards to All.

RA

gedman. Thanks for that info. I will inquire on my next follow up visit.

I had a lower spinal injury many years ago, which very rarely gives me problems.

However, when I started the kegel's post surgery, I had some discomfort in my lower back area.

I assume that also caused some of my laziness with the correct kegel exercises.

Not bothering me last night or this morning..Hooray!

Thanks,

RA

Welcome aboard Aviator!

The typical routine is to walk often and do Kegels. I was initially told to do a lot of Kegels daily but settled in on 10 - 10 second Kegels 3 times a day. Do a Kegel, hold it for a 10 second count and then release, then another and release until you have done all 10. In my case, it didn't work and I had to have another surgery to take care of the incontinence, but that is another story.

Most guys are dry in a few months, 90% by the first year. I was one of the unlucky 10% who never stopped the dribbles.

As was mentioned before, cut out caffeine, spicy food and citrus drinks or fruit. They can irritate the bladder and not help manners.

If you are leaking a lot, use a pad inside a Depends brief and change out the pads. The pads catch the dribbles and are cheaper and the Depends catch the overflow.

Do all that and you will hopefully be in the 90% club and dry up in no time.

Bill from Florida

Hi Retired,
Believe it or not, walking does help. So do the kegal exercises. I have been walking almost every day after about a week after surgery. I did Kegals for about two weeks prior to surgery and started doing them again almost immediately after surgery. Also, while I was holding the kegal I practiced coughing every now and then and that helps train your brain to squeeze when you are about to sneeze or cough. I also squeeze when I go from a sitting position to standing position. All of these little tricks seem to help me but still have the ocassional leak if I forget to squeeze. Give it a try; you will be surprised by your improvement.

sierraluvr. Thanks for your reply.

My biggest leakage times are when I get out of my truck, of get up out of a sitting position. I can generally stop flow during a cough or a sneeze.

Day 2 of resuming Kegel's and I see a small improvement!

Regards

Retired,

I still have some small issues too but nothing that is unmanageable. My Doc also mentioned that part of learning how to control bladder function is also learning how to train the brain to create an automatic response to urinary urgency. For me this is still a learning process and I gauge it on a couple of different things. One is how long I can stay in bed at night before I have to get up, how long I can go between daytime bathroom trips, and, how often I have an automatic response to perform a kegal when I feel the need to cough, sneeze, or perform some other action that may place pressure on my bladder. Keep working on it and at the very least it will not harm you.