I'm about 16 mos post surgery.

I was not "trained" at all in catheter care, just given some written material. I kept sending pics to the doctor through the portal with questions that usually started with "is this normal" lol

Luckily I have three sisters who are are nurses and could answer questions for me.

I can still see the "puncture" holes at this point, they look like pretty much very small dark spots. My surgeon recommended vitamin E cream which you can pick up at any pharmacy. It seemed to work for a spell then I started to notice no difference at all. So...fully heal...I think the packing fell out over about a 2 week period and like any scar they just seem to fade slowly after that. When you start feeling better, you might want to massage the areas a little to minimize scar tissue behind them, check with the doc to see if that may or may not be effective at all. I still feel like I have scar tissue in the muscle behind one that I feel when doing abdominal exercises......or I'm a hypochondriac...LOL

The nurses did talk with my wife and me about the catheter and the bags, smaller one for day use and a larger one for night. I was also told (but forgot) about bladder spasms; I freaked when I had one.

Next, my in-home post-surgical nurses were simply about the catheter and not about wound care. And when first meeting the in-home supervisor, I was told that wound care WAS a duty of those nurses. Well, my wounds had zero issues and healed normally. Ergo, I paid little attention to them as time progressed. Now, I have only a couple of small red marks as a reminder

My Urologist and my surgeon each inspected the wounds at the 2-week and three-month visits and thought they were healing nicely.

I wish you well.

How are you doing, @tomf?