Home from surgery

Welcome to the other side, beaverduck! Follow your discharge instructions. Walking and stool softeners are your best friends. If you remain constipated, do not take any laxatives without first consulting with your surgeon's office or help-line #. They will have a specific order of products of increasing strength to try, starting with mild.

Best wishes for a great path report!

Djin

Hey BD, welcome home. Metamucil and Oatmeal are your friends (and lots of water). The first dump is an event!

Glad you are home and resting up! As others said follow the instructions. Sometimes Doc's do know best. Keep us updated. Also while it is going to be fresh, if you can go thru all the hints for coming home and things you would need that you actually put into place and how it worked would be helpful for us in AS or getting ready for surgery to see.

Good luck!

Larry

beaverduck said...
This aint no cakewalk.

Sincerely, BD

Lol.

You’re gonna make it man.

Keep us posted on the path

BD - The recovery is tougher than advertised from my experience but you are young and should snap back quicker so hang in there, first three days home are the toughest.

While doctor’s instructions can be helpful, none have them or their staff have been through this ordeal so they just read about it and relate observations of typical patients. I have had a number of surgeries and post-op constipation is something I try to avoid at all cost now which starts with no pain pills. RALP is tougher since that part of the body is involved in performing the function and it is just not right afterwards, almost paralyzed. I was doing everything possible and it still took at least 3 days post-op as I recall to get anything going. All that being said and with all due respect to doctor’s instruction, I find Miralax mixed in with Metamucil or Citrucel in a large glass of juice will fix about anything after a few days without destroying your system. Also keep drinking lots of water and fig newtons can help.

Thanks for bringing back the fond memories... good luck with your recovery

BD... here’s to a speedy and complete recovery. Good Luck! Hope you have nothing but big fat zeroes!
Hero

Update:

Feeling quite a bit better today.
Up moving and feeling like myself - a really slow, weak, wobbly version of myself.
I've had good luck with the bowels and got my first post op shower in.
5 more days with the catheter but its even becoming more tolerable than i expected.
Staying pretty clear of the opioids, sticking with the tylenol/advil and eating whatever they put in front of me.

Thanks for all the kind words and encouragement.

BD

Thanks for the update, BD. Glad to hear things are improving.

Fiber is fine, but steer clear of broccoli and cauliflower till you're regular. They can make you gassy and it can be painful if your bowels aren't at 100 percent.

I wish I understood why the amount of time before removal of the Foley catheter varies so much from surgeon to surgeon. Seems like standard practice is as little as 4 days and as much as 2 weeks. Sounds like yours is right in the middle, at 8 days.

It'll all be in the rearview mirror soon enough!

DjinTonic said...
My uro/surgeon does open RPs only. The cath comes out with the staples at 2 weeks! I can ask at my next visit, but I assume it has to do mainly with healing time for the urethra anastamosis. While one week is probably the most common time, I think when you reduce it to just a few days, you see more cases where a cath has to be put in again because of inadequate healing time or bladder spasms.

Djin

Mine came out at 2 weeks as well. That was the policy of my urologist, though I think it's pretty standard practice for open surgeries. They also didn't discharge us from the hospital until the first bowel movement.

Approx 10 days after RALP is what my urologist recommends for catheter removal. Of course, I immediately asked why so long since I read of people at 5-7 days. They said every doctor is different, 10 days seemed to be the safest time period for maximum healing and he rarely had an issue then.

BD - The first week post-op is tough, I had surgery on a Tuesday, released on Weds morning, and felt like crap going into the weekend so you are right on schedule.. Everything takes so long at first, getting up, emptying bag, eating, showering, getting dressed, changing bags, going for walk, getting underdressed, going to bed, emptying bag in middle of night since you drank so much water. about a week out, everything is routine and you just impatiently wait for catheter-out day, free at last.

My catheter and staples came out on day 7. So, yeah, there is some variation in that. I think I had the first dump on day 4 or 5. I borrowed a shower bench so I could shower sitting down, and did without shaving until I was steady enough on my feet to stand in front of the mirror.

I also stayed on the first floor while the catheter was in--I really didn't want to get tangled up in it if I needed to get to the bathroom (ground floor) in the dark.

BD--hows it going?

Day 5, post op.....
All seems to be going well.
Pretty much on my feet all day, either standing walking or leaning. I feel way more comfortable upright than i do sitting or laying down..... I've had nearly no pink in my pee bag (once after a longer than normal neighborhood walk) and i've had daily bowel movements for 3 days in a row. Woohoo!
There's definitely a hump around day 3-4 that marks a turning point for the better....

Catheter is, at the least, annoying, at worst, irritating. Will be nice to be rid of it in 3 days.....
Most annoying and time consuming part is deciding between, and switching from, the leg bag and the night bag - can't sleep with the leg bag/can't ski with the night bag.... Ha! Kidding...
I've tended to lube the tube more often than I thought i would but you gotta do what you gotta do. A fresh re-lube almost feels like a good air conditioner on a hot day - relief!

Off the opioids and am forgetting to take advil/tylenol so my pain/discomfort is waning.... Staying with the fiber and stool softeners for the foreseeable future but will probably stop taking them soon too.

Trying to be mindful of my diet and to not overdo it. Pre-surgery, i was so active that i never had to think about what i ate. Now that i'm sitting around a lot, and all the other realities of my situation, I'm trying to not pig out. I started back on my 16:8 intermittent daily fast yesterday so that should auto-manage most of that for me.

Lots of weird sensations in my guts and pelvic and private regions - a mix of some painful jabs, some weird, non-painful spasms, some borderline pleasant sensations. It's hard to explain it all... Not sure what to think, just heartened by any sensation of any kind....

I could go on and on but that's all for now. Feel free to ask any ?s or reach out to me for info. I'd love to help someone the way you all have helped me.

Best to us all, BD