Bowels rebooting post surgery? Never trust a fart!

@heavyphil About your "bidet" comment: A few years ago, we installed a couple of bidets at home. PC or no, they're amazing - seat soft and warm, a gentle warm jet to clean, and a poof to air-dry (which doesn't really work, but the toilet paper dab afterward always comes up clear). After my business, I go about my business knowing I'm not walking around with a poop film between my cheeks. (Not that I think about it often.) It's amazing to me that in the U.S., where we're famously obsessed with cleanliness, we're so lazy with that region. The only downside is cost (a couple hundred bucks). But if you can afford it....

@guyrm I guess you could think of it like a waterpark....ummm, just different. 🙂

@fritzo -

I just drank my usual fluids (64 ounces daily, more or less) the day I got my catheter out. I’d never bothered to switch to the leg bag and stayed on the overnight bag my entire eight days of being cathed, just because I would have filled that leg bag every few minutes. I showed up at the doc’s office with the big bag, which some of the nurses thought was kind of funny.

Daily pad count - I started very high, around 15 a day, plus two briefs (one daily, one overnight) - that’s probably because it took me a while to work out when to change, so I was initially changing just about every time one got wet.

Those things can actually hold quite a bit, so after a couple of weeks, I got used to the idea of letting them go a little longer between changes, and got it down to more like 10-12 a day (which was still a lot).

I had my follow-up to surgery at about the three-week point (after catheter removal) and the doc was surprised I was still using so many. That’s what got them to get me set up with PT sooner rather than later.

Over the coming weeks, it dwindled. Now, about 3-1/2 months out, I’m down to 4-5 pads every 24 hours. At home, I just wear them inside regular briefs, but when I go out, I switch back to a Depends brief. I don’t trust myself completely yet as far as leaking through to my pants (though it hasn’t happened yet).

I think doggie poop bags would be fine for disposing of the pads, but not big enough for the briefs, should you need to change those.

I don’t need anything extra in the way of pockets. What I do is get a wipe and fold that into a little square that is about the same dimensions as a pad, which is about the size of a fat wallet. Then I get a plastic shopping bag, put the pad and the wipe in there, and just wrap the bag tightly around that. It’s really not much bigger than, say, two big iPhones stacked on top of each other. It easily fits in my front or back pocket, and then I just head straight to the restroom to make the change and then carry on shopping.

Even at my worst, I never needed to make a second change in the same store. That was always most likely to happen at a restaurant, where sitting for an extended time is involved. Still, I didn’t carry in my backpack unless the car was parked in a parking garage or some other distant lot, I just walked out and grabbed another pad-wipe-bag combo and went back in and changed. No problem.

For me, it was an aggravating inconvenience (understatement) for about a week. Then it just got set in my mind that, “This is what I need to do now,” and I got on with it, and before long, it was simply built into my routine - every stop on a busy Saturday would likely involve a pad change. That was how I looked at it, and it’s amazing how adaptable humans can be, I think. Before long, I wasn’t even really thinking about it much.

I know a lot of that sounds pretty dire, so I’ll tell you that I had my first real improvement right at the two-month point, which was very encouraging. If you’re like me (and you may well work this much quicker), it’s the first two months that were the hardest, and it wasn’t even the going out or the daytime, it was the overnight - up every two hours like clockwork to pee and change into a fresh pad.

That’s the first bit that got better for me - with no notice, just like a switch had been flipped, I stopped peeing in my pants while standing up from the bed. All of a sudden, I was able to walk to the bathroom and pee like the good ol’ days, and over time, I could go longer and longer between getting up to pee.

Now, I get up twice at most, and in the mornings, my pad is almost completely dry. Daytime is still not great, but getting better. Mornings are better than afternoons. I can usually make it to noon before my first pad change (I get up at 7:30AM), so each day is a little better.

@fritzo -

I just drank my usual fluids (64 ounces daily, more or less) the day I got my catheter out. I’d never bothered to switch to the leg bag and stayed on the overnight bag my entire eight days of being cathed, just because I would have filled that leg bag every few minutes. I showed up at the doc’s office with the big bag, which some of the nurses thought was kind of funny.

Daily pad count - I started very high, around 15 a day, plus two briefs (one daily, one overnight) - that’s probably because it took me a while to work out when to change, so I was initially changing just about every time one got wet.

Those things can actually hold quite a bit, so after a couple of weeks, I got used to the idea of letting them go a little longer between changes, and got it down to more like 10-12 a day (which was still a lot).

I had my follow-up to surgery at about the three-week point (after catheter removal) and the doc was surprised I was still using so many. That’s what got them to get me set up with PT sooner rather than later.

Over the coming weeks, it dwindled. Now, about 3-1/2 months out, I’m down to 4-5 pads every 24 hours. At home, I just wear them inside regular briefs, but when I go out, I switch back to a Depends brief. I don’t trust myself completely yet as far as leaking through to my pants (though it hasn’t happened yet).

I think doggie poop bags would be fine for disposing of the pads, but not big enough for the briefs, should you need to change those.

I don’t need anything extra in the way of pockets. What I do is get a wipe and fold that into a little square that is about the same dimensions as a pad, which is about the size of a fat wallet. Then I get a plastic shopping bag, put the pad and the wipe in there, and just wrap the bag tightly around that. It’s really not much bigger than, say, two big iPhones stacked on top of each other. It easily fits in my front or back pocket, and then I just head straight to the restroom to make the change and then carry on shopping.

Even at my worst, I never needed to make a second change in the same store. That was always most likely to happen at a restaurant, where sitting for an extended time is involved. Still, I didn’t carry in my backpack unless the car was parked in a parking garage or some other distant lot, I just walked out and grabbed another pad-wipe-bag combo and went back in and changed. No problem.

For me, it was an aggravating inconvenience (understatement) for about a week. Then it just got set in my mind that, “This is what I need to do now,” and I got on with it, and before long, it was simply built into my routine - every stop on a busy Saturday would likely involve a pad change. That was how I looked at it, and it’s amazing how adaptable humans can be, I think. Before long, I wasn’t even really thinking about it much.

I know a lot of that sounds pretty dire, so I’ll tell you that I had my first real improvement right at the two-month point, which was very encouraging. If you’re like me (and you may well work this much quicker), it’s the first two months that were the hardest, and it wasn’t even the going out or the daytime, it was the overnight - up every two hours like clockwork to pee and change into a fresh pad.

That’s the first bit that got better for me - with no notice, just like a switch had been flipped, I stopped peeing in my pants while standing up from the bed. All of a sudden, I was able to walk to the bathroom and pee like the good ol’ days, and over time, I could go longer and longer between getting up to pee.

Now, I get up twice at most, and in the mornings, my pad is almost completely dry. Daytime is still not great, but getting better. Mornings are better than afternoons. I can usually make it to noon before my first pad change (I get up at 7:30AM), so each day is a little better.

@fritzo - yes, there are a hundred little things that a person never considers until they’re living it.

I never even thought about what incontinence would be like when my doc said that was a side effect. If I had thought about it, it likely would have been, “Ok, every time I have to pee, I’m gonna pee in my pants. No problem. Wear Depends, change ‘em out every couple of hours, easy-peasy.”

What I didn’t even consider is that my penis would turn into a faucet that at best leaked a fast drip constantly and at worst did a fine impression of a firehose on full blast.

Drip, drip, drip…it never stopped, just went faster or slower. Move this way…drip, drip, drip. Move that way…drip, drip, drip.

Pick something up, set something down, same thing, interrupted by occasional squirts, and then the full release every time I stood up - thankfully, that’s all but gone now.

You’ll become very, very mindful of where your penis is pointing when you’re uncovered. Freshly cleaned up out of the shower, dried off, feeling almost normal, then you’ll twist a little to pick up your deodorant, your penis will move with you, dangling over your foot, and…squirt squirt drip drip drip…so much for feeling normal, because now your foot is covered in urine. Where’s that washcloth?…

Same thing when sitting down on the toilet to change out pads. You’ll lower your trousers and your briefs, go to squat down on the bowl, and your dripping penis will weep a line of urine right up the inside back of your briefs as you sit down.

Those are the little surprises that amp up the frustration, but it gets better, and I’d say that now, as far as sleep goes, I’m likely doing much better than I was the last couple of years before my surgery. My enlarged prostate was getting me up sometimes 5-6 times a night to pee. Now I’m down to two.

Also, you’ll find scheduling your water intake helpful. You’ll want to drink what they tell you (for me it was 2 liters/64 ounces) to keep things flushed and healthy, but you’ll probably want to work that out so you’re not drinking past a certain time at night. I go to bed between 10:30PM-11PM, so I do a hard stop on any fluids at 6PM, minus a sip for meds.

@turtbean Reality check in full mode....didn't really know the nature of it. I can't even come up with a joke. Leaky faucet time a coming.

Thinking out loud-guess I should take up the bathroom mats and get a wet jet for the bathroom floor. Doing the guy thing....prepping the gear I can prep because my gear is broke.

But, thank you for sure. Better to know!