Ed,
Regarding the sheets question.
Once you get home from the RC surgery, you may want to have cotton sheets on the bed and use the mattress protector pads either on top of the sheet or under the sheet. My wife preferred that I have it on top of the sheet so I didn't get the sheets wet at all.
The problem with that, is those things are a moisture barrier so it get kind of hot when sleeping sometimes. Even under the sheet it does the same kind of thing.
We got those crib pad things. They come in different sizes and the bigger ones are better if you move around much in your sleep.
What I did is wear those Depends underwear (fancy name for diaper) and I wore a "man pad" inside of the diaper. It provides for additional absorbtion as I found I would get leakage when just using the diaper without the pad inside.
Here is a link to stuff for men:
www.us.depend.com/male/Products.aspx
Of course there are other brands but these are the ones I could get at my local Walmart. You also want to get those scented plastic bags to put the used ones in.
I'm sure that others can let you know what they did when they got home.
When you are first home after an RC, you will still have a catheter in. So....no problem with the bed getting wet. It's just once the catheter comes out, it will be like there is just an open tap and it will just leak out. It won't be flowing out because it's not really storing up the urine. It comes from the kidneys to the neobladder and out. The more kegels you do, the faster that resolves and you start holding urine in the neobladder.
The urology nurse will give you a schedule with how often you should empty the neobladder so it can slowly, slowly stretch to the right size. They start it pretty small (around 40cc or so) and it will stretch over time to around 400 or more.
Mike
