Incontinence

Men have been told for over 20 years that 50% of us will be incontinent after prostate surgery. Most will be fairly continent at three months and the majority will be continent after 1 year. Some will never gain continence and have to use artificial means to become dry again.

My question is: what is different between that 50% that have almost total continence after surgery, and those that don't ?

I had an RRP in August 2007 and was 99% continent after surgery. Things were going great until about September 2008 when I started having a slow stream and it took quite a while to finish the job. In December I had a cystoscopy and it was determined I had a stone that attached to a suture at the bladder neck and it was almost totally blocking the urethra.

A transurethral resection of the bladder was performed to remove that stone and a couple of other calculi. This was an outpatient day surgical procedure and the only down side the urologist forwarned me of was going home with a foley catheter. I live 250 miles from the medical center and we stayed in town overnight, going back into the office the next morning to have the foley removed. This was Thursday morning.

We traveled home on Thursday. At 3:00 AM on Friday morning I was in the local emergency room to get catherized. By the time all the paperwork was filled out, I started going again and went home. Friday night at 8:00 PM I was back in the emergency room and had another foley catheter installed. The foley remained in through the Christmas holidays. When I had the foley removed on December 29th I was and continue to leak like a sieve.

My anger at having to contend with urine 24 hrs a day makes me ask why so many of us have to contend with it. What are they doing to 50 of us that they aren't doing to the rest of us. I've heard the tap dance and I believe we are being told the truth as they accept it, but I don't believe it is the truth. I don't believe they care enough to find out why.

If we were breast cancer patients instead of prostate cancer patients we would be demanding better results. We just can't complain as well as our wives and girlfriends do.

Dave

Hi Dave, I totally understand what you are saying.

My husband Pete is still incontinent after his salvage surgery in 2006. He did have an AUS installed in September of 2008. That is usually very very successful. but because of his former radiation, and then surgery after the radiation, there was so much damage to the bladder neck and surrounding areas, that the AUS is not totally perfect, but it is MUCH better than before. Now he uses two pads a day and one at night, as before it was 10 or more pads a day....
.There are others here, KW, Gene, and Berb, who may jump in and tell you about their wonderful success with the AUS...(artificial sphincter) Im glad to see you at this forum, and you will like the answers and people here. Very helpful, kind, and knowledgeable...... Diane

i agree with kw above, it we were all being 100% honest, I wonder how many would admit that perhaps we dripped a bit here and there before our bouts with PC, you know, that little bit left in the tube, the time you didn't shake one more time. When I think back to pre-surgery days, I now realize I was in that category too.

David

Dave, sorry to hear about your issues with regards to incontinence. I was very fortunate to have had no issues with incontinence following catheter removal. Truly I don't think physicians have a reliable way to know or predict how any of us will respond, very much variable from one man to the next. I can understand your frustration with it and can also understand how frustrating/devastating this issue must be. In my case, my wife is wonderful and very supportive with respect to my ED, but she can't understand my frustration with it. I guess it is just a "Man" thing, but I feel a great sense of loss and anger and can't convey this to her. Even though there can still be tenderness and satisfaction is our lives, there can't be "that" anymore without pharmaceutical support, and I can't find the female equivalent for explanation. Sure, the statistics say most of us recover, but when you are in the 90% that should regain function and DON'T the docs just don't have the answer. Men in general are stoic, don't share frustration well, and are embarrassed to talk about these issues, but these things are devastating to us, because in my case, I feel like less of a man because of it.

Randy