4th May 2004
Alison:
I decided to post this topic as a question and hope you will find this response to a question you raised under another thread.
The urologist feels that the way they manipulated my bladder during surgery weakend it so even though I can urinate if I push with my might, he used a balloon analogy-- all I'm doing is using my intestines to push down on my bladder and have incomplete emptying.
Another doctor told me he believes since I can't function sexually, he believes they cut and/or damaged the two nerves responsible for these actions. Regardless, they say time may cure and that I really won't know that it is permenant until about two-years after my body is no longer assaulted with chemo/radiation/or surgery. Apparently it takes a really long time for the nerves to repair. They stented my ureters during the procedure to make certain they didn't cut them, but removed the stents before I woke up. In the mean time, I straight cath when I need to every less than 6 hours. Does your husband still have a foley cath in all the time? That increases his risk of infection-- is he opposed to cathing himself? It really is easy (difficult at first like anything, but becomes old hat after a few times). Also, there are drugs to shrink his prostate-- Flomax is one of them, which will allow the urine to flow down the urethra-- right now his prostate is causing a blockage. Let me know, and thanks for bringing this up. :)
I decided to post this topic as a question and hope you will find this response to a question you raised under another thread.
The urologist feels that the way they manipulated my bladder during surgery weakend it so even though I can urinate if I push with my might, he used a balloon analogy-- all I'm doing is using my intestines to push down on my bladder and have incomplete emptying.
Another doctor told me he believes since I can't function sexually, he believes they cut and/or damaged the two nerves responsible for these actions. Regardless, they say time may cure and that I really won't know that it is permenant until about two-years after my body is no longer assaulted with chemo/radiation/or surgery. Apparently it takes a really long time for the nerves to repair. They stented my ureters during the procedure to make certain they didn't cut them, but removed the stents before I woke up. In the mean time, I straight cath when I need to every less than 6 hours. Does your husband still have a foley cath in all the time? That increases his risk of infection-- is he opposed to cathing himself? It really is easy (difficult at first like anything, but becomes old hat after a few times). Also, there are drugs to shrink his prostate-- Flomax is one of them, which will allow the urine to flow down the urethra-- right now his prostate is causing a blockage. Let me know, and thanks for bringing this up. :)