Bladder not working...Cath still in

Well, my surgery actually took place on February 24th and not January 28th as originally planned since I got myself so worked up over all this that I gave myself a heart attack on 1/14 and had to recover from that before they could do the TAH. So now its done but I am still not done with the hospital. My bladder (which was compressed for a while before the surgery due to the 11 lb fibroid they removed has decided that it doesnt want to return to functioning. The BM's are fine and the kidneys are fine too, but they have taken the cathedar out 3 times already only to give me 8 hours to drink and pee and nothing. So the Cath is back in and they are giving my bladder time to rest. Has anyone else had any experience like this? They said they may have to send me to a urulogist and I may have to self cath 4-5 times a day until the bladder function returns. I don't think I can do that. I have to gift for self medicating. Even the blood thinner shots my husband has to give me. If you had a similar situation please let me know. This is driving me crazy. I keep joking that this cath bag is the latest fashion accessory but lets be honest.....I hate it!

I don't have any experience with the cath bags at home, but I just wanted to say I'm sorry you're having such a rough time. I hope things will improve real soon. Take care ~~ StarryNite

Hi LindawithaB

I really sympthise. I had my surgery on a Tuesday with an extensive anterior/posterior repair. My GYN instructed catheter removal on the thurs. I could not pee at all but felt totally desperate and in pain. They tried a residual catheter so I could pass urine and then try again to pee normally but still no luck several hours later so I was re-catheterised. This happened 4 more times and in the end they said I would have to go home with the cath bag and come back 4 days later or so.

I was very upset and 1 extremely kind and patient nurse instructed me on the clamp and release method - basically you clamp the catheter off at a point in the tube which stops it from draining into the bag, thereby giving your bladder an opportunity to recognise when it feels full and sort of "re-train" it - this is probably not quite the right technical explanation but I hope it sort of helps - anyway when you feel like you need to urinate or just start to feel uncomfortable in the bladder area, you unclamp the clip and the urine drains in to the bag. You can also measure how much you drink and then what comes out by doing this to make sure you are not retaining any urine. Once you have passed urine into the bag, you then reclamp until you need to go again and repeat the process.

I did this for 24 hours and then the catheter was removed when I felt like I needed to pass urine. Initially I couldn't go and was really despondent. The nurse suggested I went off, had a shower and just tried to relax about it all. An hour or so later, I had the best pee of my life!!! (sorry if TMI!) I have to level with you and say there was still the occasional sticky moment and even 4 weeks post surgery, things are not quite fully back to normal but I am getting there. My GYN said that if there is a lot of bladder trauma, this can happen and just to keep the pelvic floor area as relaxed as poss.

Sorry this is long but I hope it might help. Best of luck.