Jimi said...
Monday I will be four weeks post op and leaking is slowing down a bit, but I still use a pad all day long. Down to 1/2 cup of coffee a day though because if I drink anything it just runs right through me. Mostly when I stand up
and hardly ever when I am sitting or laying down.
After I got my catheter out (10 days after surgery) I was very surprised/frustrated/upset at how much I was leaking. Actually it was pouring out at every step It does seem to get better as the days roll on. I was given great confidence by the members here (Pratoman, Halbert and some others) that told me not to be depressed by what is happening. I try to do the Kegel whenever possible. Sometimes I feel that I have to hurry and get to the bathroom but when I get there, almost nothing. Hopefully next week the leakage will slow down a bit more. I did the right thing by having the surgery but shouldn't have done AS for so long.
You sound sort of like me. If I was standing, I was peeing, for quite a while. I took a good while before I got a lot better, maybe longer than you will take, hopefully. I will repeat 3 things I have reported previously(which my docs told me) one or more of which you might find useful:
1: Guys with big prostates, like me, tend to take a lot longer to get continent, but don't really have any lower success rate, just slower. Did you happen to have an extra large gland? If so, gird your loins for the possibility of a longer time, though still with the same odds of final victory as anyone else.
2: It sounds like you are dry at night? If so, the Chairman of Vanderbilt Uro surgery told me that the single best predictor of finally becoming continent is being dry at night from early on. So if you are dry at night, remain confident that your odds of getting much better are very good.
3: One of the most useful was this: sometimes nothing but enough time is going to do what no amount of Kegels can do. You just have to heal. The healing is for general bladder irritation and spasms, plus the oft forgotten scar where your urethra has been sewn back together. I was told that they try to sew this as far back away from the sphincter as possible. But there is not a lot of room, much of the work is done when you are head down which causes the bladder to fall back towards your head, and of course your bladder is empty.
The trouble is, when you stand up with a full bladder, all of that falls downward against your remaining urinary sphincter, which itself may be traumatized. If that scar manages to drop down into the sphincter, even the strongest muscles may not be able to compress the urethra at the scar, until enough time passes for the scar to soften up. Stitches may also need to dissolve. The problem here may not be weak muscles, but a scar that can not be forced closed even by fairly strong muscles. Plus, when you stand up and all that urine and bladder goes slamming into the sphincter, the irritated (from surgical trauma) may spasm, and it will be as though you are trying to force urine out, even though you are not. It will be even more difficult for your muscles to squeeze that scar closed tightly enough to over come the extra pressure caused by this spasm.
Bottom line: lot's of stuff needs to heal, and some things might take months. If you are lucky and that scar is not where it must be closed by your sphincter, and you already have fairly strong pelvic muscles, well you might be mostly dry quickly. If all is not perfect, it might take months. Here is hoping you are more in the former group!
Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 3/18/2015 9:15:40 PM (GMT-6)