Leakage

Well Alan you should be just getting pass the the every 2 hr mark as far as cathing. Now when you speaking of irrigating I usualy use 60 cc's of saline and shoot it throught the catheter. What you're speaking of is aspirating putting on the syringe and then pulling back this does not work all the time as you found out. The main thing is to just get the saline into the cathater for irrigating. As far as leaking I would call your surgeon because this should not be happening especially if it was 1 1/2 hrs when you were at the 2 hr mark. I have the Indiana Pouch and I have some knid of stopper that keeps mine from leaking, it will get just a tad wet throught the bandaid which is what I use but nothing drastic. Like I said give your surgeon a call is the best bet here. Good Luck, Joe

Hi to all pouch people,

I had my stoma catheter removed a week ago and I'm catheterizing OK but have leakage problems. Initially leakage started about one and a half hours after emptying but I'm now up to two and a half hours. Is this leakage normal? I've tried an Ace Stopper but it doesn't fit too well because the stoma is in my navel...the stopper tends to pop out and even when held in with a plaster still leaks a bit. It does give me an extra half hour though. Pat, I think you have a navel stoma don't you? Any comments?

Another weird problem I have is with flushing. I can get the saline in OK by inserting a syringe into the catheter but I can't usually get it out again by pulling back the plunger. It's like trying to pull against a vacuum...I can barely move it. And it's not just me. My partner had a go and she had the same problem. On one or two occasions I've managed to get the saline out by fiddling with the position of the catheter, but that doesn't always work. I've discussed it with the urology nurses and one of the doctors but they've never experienced the problem. Any suggestions?

Apart from these two issues I'm feeling really fit. I got the histology results last week and they showed that the pre-op chemo pretty well removed the tumours from the bladder and there was no trace of the cancer in the lymph nodes. The only surprise was a different undiagnosed cancer in my prostate. It was a low grade one though and a blood test showed that my PSA count was almost zero...i.e. the cancer hasn't spread! So hopefully the nastiness is in check...for the time being at least.

Good luck to all other fellow sufferers. To those of you having chemo at the moment I send my heartfelt sympathy. I didn't like that at all. But you get through it eventually!

Just as I was having my op my brother was diagnosed, out of the blue, with lung cancer. He didn't tell me until I left hospital because he was scared it would affect my recovery. It was very generous of him as it was quite a shock and may well have caused a regression. We're both ex-smokers so maybe we brought it on ourselves...but the timing is cruel!

Cheers...Alan