Tim and others,
Just want to make sure that when you cath you're using a water soluable lubricant like KY-Jelly. I must add here that your doctors nurse would be wrong to say if it's draining something then not to worry, you must watch the color of your urine. If it's light in color that's good, but if it's dark yellow or worse that is not good. This issue is related to being hydrated, if you drink enough liquid (specifically water) it will be a light color. But if your water / fluid intake is low it would be a darker color. Then there is the mucous in our urine and you need to make sure if you are producing a lot of mucous that you get your bladder as empty as possible. If you allow mucous to sit in your bladder it's possible for it to become a source of infection (per my urologist/surgeon), and as I think back to the horrendous UTI's I had last year (severe headache with 103 & 104 temps) I remember that I had been producing alot of mucous then and what he suggests is very possibly the reason for them.
Back to the kegels, there are two type of muscle fibers that are in use when we are working toward continence. One is 'slow twitch' the other 'fast twitch'. The slow twitch need the longer hold time for them to become stronger, and that is on a scale of 1-10 you hold at a level 3 for 10-15 seconds. For the fast twitch fibers you need the quicker time hold, which is again a level three and this time for a 3-5 second hold time. At each level I'd only do those 1 session for say five to ten minutes but not together, do one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The slow twitch fibers are the ones that help us hold our urine in most of the time, and the fast twitch fibers are for the times when one laughs or coughs or perhaps you lift a box or some such thing and thats when we learn how to quickly tighten before we do those activities (fast twitch fibers).
Hope some of this helps guys,
Lou
Ps. Tim I think it's possible to get a lubricant that has a numbing effect, ask your doctors nurse about it.