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Scarred Urethra
I had my R/C a month and a half ago and as the recovery moved along, the doctor removed the foley (Yay!) but in somewhat of a surprise to me, I got very little urine through it with most still coming out through the SuperPubic tube. Well, the doctor was not alarmed but before he was able to go in for a look, I came down with an infection. Then as I healed from that (and urine through the urethra stopped), he looked with a cystoscope and found a stricture in my urethra and scheduled a procedure to work through it. THen infection took back over while we waited. Last Tuesday, he went in on a scheduled half hour procedure and got through the stricture as planned but then as he moved up the urethra, encountered scar tissue just as he got to the neobladder. His partner had been operating in the next room and as he finished came in and he took out the superpubic tube and put a cystoscope in through that hole and was also able to see the scarring from within the neo. At this point they closed things up as the planned half hour procedure was now more like two hrs.
So we are at a strategic pause while they gather data about which way to move next. The neobladder itself is great, cystogram, loopogram, CT Scan, visual inspection have all been super but it needs an outlet that works. So my doc told me he is reaching out to a number of people in the field for advice. One name he mentioned was Dr Bochner at Sloan Kettering whose name has often been mentioned on this board.
Basically, the problem is that they need to get through the scar tissue without injuring the neo or the sphincter and it has to be able to remain open, with a foley at first and then by itself.
If we can’t get this done, it appears that I will have to get the neo converted to either an Indiana Pouch or an Ilieal Conduit.
Oh, and later in the week, another infection spiked up and this time, based on cultures, they switched me to Cipro. This morning was the first time I felt much like posting about it.