I travelled to New Orleans to visit my urologist, Dr. Winters with LSU Healthcare. In December of last year I had surgery to reroute my bladder to a stoma in my belly. I can now catheterize myself through the stoma and don’t have to wear a bag. They had to close my bladder neck to prevent leaking through my urethra. About three months after the surgery I began leaking a small amount through my urethra. We were all kinda like ‘okay this is probably because my stitches aren’t healed yet.’ We let it go but over the course of time it’s started getting more frequently. We have explored the fact of maybe it’s a UTI so we put me on antibiotics. The antibiotics do help but unfortunately it starts happening again. At one point my skin was starting to show the wear and tear of staying wet all the time. With a spinal cord injury you have to take care of your skin so that you don’t develop your pressure sores which if not treated to lead to more serious complications and even death. So I came to the conclusion that I needed to call my surgeon to find out what was going on.
The day didn’t start out exactly as planned because we were about an hour late for my appointment due to the fact that I live four hours away and there was an accident on the highway that caused traffic to be backed up. The doctors office almost wouldn’t see me but thank God by the time we got there they changed their mind. Dr. Winters sat down with me and went over my symptoms. He asked if I was on any bladder medication to help with bladder spasms and I told him know that I am not on any medication besides Lisa to help with my swelling. He put me on some medication for bladder spasms called Veslcare. I take 5 MG in the evenings.
Dr. Winters told me that if this medication doesn’t help then he would have to lightly sedate me to do a exploratory exam. It could be a fistula from my bladder neck closer. Basically it’s like a small pouch that collects urine and when my bladder spasms it causes the fluid to escape out my urethra. If this is the case I will have to have vaginal surgery to fix the problem. He said that it is a common thing that happens after this type of surgery but normally it does not present itself this late after surgery. I didn’t tell him that this is been happening for that long. He says it is not as complex as the first surgery but it is still a major procedure because everything is made up of scar tissue which is a different type of tissue that healthy tissue.
I waited a few days to post this blog to let my medicine kick in to be able to give you guys a little bit of an update and so far I haven’t leaked on this medicine. I’m going to continue to use it for my months trail and hopefully it’ll continue working.
The day didn’t start out exactly as planned because we were about an hour late for my appointment due to the fact that I live four hours away and there was an accident on the highway that caused traffic to be backed up. The doctors office almost wouldn’t see me but thank God by the time we got there they changed their mind. Dr. Winters sat down with me and went over my symptoms. He asked if I was on any bladder medication to help with bladder spasms and I told him know that I am not on any medication besides Lisa to help with my swelling. He put me on some medication for bladder spasms called Veslcare. I take 5 MG in the evenings.
Dr. Winters told me that if this medication doesn’t help then he would have to lightly sedate me to do a exploratory exam. It could be a fistula from my bladder neck closer. Basically it’s like a small pouch that collects urine and when my bladder spasms it causes the fluid to escape out my urethra. If this is the case I will have to have vaginal surgery to fix the problem. He said that it is a common thing that happens after this type of surgery but normally it does not present itself this late after surgery. I didn’t tell him that this is been happening for that long. He says it is not as complex as the first surgery but it is still a major procedure because everything is made up of scar tissue which is a different type of tissue that healthy tissue.
I waited a few days to post this blog to let my medicine kick in to be able to give you guys a little bit of an update and so far I haven’t leaked on this medicine. I’m going to continue to use it for my months trail and hopefully it’ll continue working.
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