I’m scheduled to have surgery in June. They are going to take a biopsy to see if it is cancer. If the tumor is large I may lose my bladder. Now my prostate is enlarged. They will deal with that also. What’s it like without a bladder? Truly scared!
As I said in the other thread they can make you a new one called a neo-bladder from a piece of small intestine. My uncle lost his a few years ago. He's actually not unhappy about any of it. His passion is golf (and drinking beer while playing golf) He can now get all the way around the golf course with out "interruption" They reroute the urethra to a bag. The biggest problem is getting your skin clean enough to keep the urostomy bag over the stoma. With PsA some of the meds we take may slightly increase you risk of infection with a neo bladder because there is some enzymes no longer being produced that an OEM bladder does. You will have to do some PT to learn to use your stomach muscles to control things, but it comes really quick.
Of course the alternative to all this is MUCH worse. Any day I wake up on the right side of the grass is a good day
Shop hard for a surgeon though if they decide to take the prostate not a lot are doing the nerve sparing surgery. The guys that are good have a great success rate with leaving things "functioning"
You can read about the latest at:
http://ether.stanford.edu/urology/Radical%20cystectomy%20and%20blad...
Bens friends doesn't deal much with ostomys as they are pretty common. You can reead up on them and folks experiences here: http://www.ostomy.org/Home.html#
Thanks tntlamb,the info is fascinating. My 93 year old mother is visiting me from California. Since I can’t travel this will be the last time I’ll see her! The emotions are running wild. Now it’s all up to the creator ,