Upcoming Surgery

Good luck on your surgery today Depov!

Depov, that is a great report. Keep it going. Drink lots of water (stay away from the beer and coffee for a while), and keep walking. Naps are good too.

Depov - Excellent news, get prepared to take it easy for a while regardless of how you feel. One thing I found is that I was drinking like crazy with the catheter in and afterwards, I had to dial it back after dinner or I was up every hour or two for the first week or two. Sounds like you got it under control already.

Excellent news. Please respect the fact that you had major surgery and your insides were rocked. Be sure to give yourself time to slowly recover.

When you have to cough/sneeze push a pillow against your abdomen. It will ease the ease pain.

The pillow helps with sneezes also if you are lucky enough to have one handy. Otherwise, curl up as much as possible and hope for the best.

The effects of intubation caused similar issues for the first few days I has home also. You try to clear your your throat many times before you realize that is not a good idea and learn to ignore it since it is not an official cough for the right reasons. It should be going away any time now. I drank a lot of hot herbal tea with honey in the hopes it was solving the problem. Not sure if it did or not but it did go away after a while for one reason or another.

Good luck until the next surprise.

Hardly coughed at all in bed last night. One tip: gargle with salt water. I also had to stay off of my right side. Not because of pain, but I could begin to feel the tickle. Not sure why.

Now starting kegels, although I am one week out and am not even using pads- leaking less now than when I had a prostate. Still very earlier in the process, but things are looking good.

I highly recommend DR. Patel at Advent Health for those who are still searching.

Wouldn't you know, after a day of kegels and taking the Sildenafil I woke up in the middle of the night with wet shorts. WTH? Another surprise.

Depov - Even if you seem to be fully continent after you get home from having the catheter out (I was like you), those first couple of weeks are a little dicey since you have not yet experienced all the possible leakage scenarios that your body will experience. I fell asleep in my recliner the next day and had a dream that I was peeing and quickly woke up to find out I leaked a bit. I also experience a couple of sneezes the same day and I was just fine. I later blew my nose and had a minor spurt so learned to be careful when blowing nose standing up. The modified urinary system is just not that reliable the first 1-2 weeks in my experience so I stayed with pads and Depends underwear for the first week which were dry 99% of the time and every time I got up in the morning.

I also stopped drinking after dinner hour to minimize the night time opportunities for leakage but still got up a lot during the first week or two, being paranoid of an accident. Never had one at night but was up a lot just to be sure. I still always think twice about passing gas too. I am many weeks past now but the memories are still there.

Good luck and don't think you have to be Superman quite yet. Watch the lifting for the 4-6 week period also as some days you feel pretty good and you try to carry all the groceries in at one time. Nothing in it for you to get done quickly at this point. You can always take two trips.......