Heart surgery hospital recovery and incontinence.

[ThomasInWVa]

In January, I had heart ablation surgery. It went well with very little overall discomfort. This is about the 6 hours in recovery with urinary incontinence.

The surgery itself takes about 5 hours and requires the insertion of hearth catheters in the center top of both legs. The incisions are large and are the main reason for the recovery period. For 5 hours you are basically on your back and not allows to move and open the sutures in your legs.

The surgery also involves a lot of intravenous fluids and post operation urination is quite high. There is no record of any urinary catheter use during the operation.

I arrived in the operating room wearing a diaper. This wasn’t a problem with the surgical team and they mentioned they will just remove it when ready. It takes a few minutes to prep before they knock you out.

I woke in recovery to the news that the operation when well.

I immediately noticed I was already wet. I mentioned my incontinence to the staff and the solution was to take another rolled cotton blanket and place it between my legs. Since they already have you on a waterproof mattress pad and just use blankets to soak up the urine.
After an hour I was quite wet and mentioned to the staff that I had a supply of my diapers. I wasn’t allowed to move or to wear them due to the leg sutures but they had no problems helping out. I wasn’t allowed to move but they could move me to change the bedding and clean me up a bit. With business like efficiency, they quickly had the pad and blankets changed out as well as laying down one of my diapers so it could provide a dryer feeling. They did the changing and cleaning without ounce exposing my genitals or putting any strain on my legs as they rolled me around. The ladies were total professionals.

I asked why they didn’t do a catheter and they said there was no need. This is the usual way they handle it when the patient isn’t allowed to move post-op.

After some time they start to allow you to sit up. After 5 hours you can stand and they make sure the sutures are holding well. Then after another hour, I was able to put on a diaper as usual and check out.

I was surprised at just how much urine I produced. Urination was nearly constant for the 6 hours and very high in the evening and through the night.

I also had to have yet another set of emergency eye surgeries and in those cases, I was able to wear a diaper thru the procedure once I mentioned. One anesthesiologist mentioned that you don’t urinate under the general anesthesia they normally use. Which makes a lot of sense as urine output for the next 48 hours is much lower than usual. All three times as I awoke slowly post-op, the first thing I noticed was heavy urination occurring.

[Little BabyDoll Christine]

Thanks, I may have ablation surgery for A-fib so at least I am hearing from someone who has been there

[steve in diaps]

In 2017 I had triple bypass. Med department miss read my list of meds.they thought I had to have mira-lax and linzess two times a day. By the 2nd day I had full blown diaper rash. 3rd day the skin was peeling. Guess stomach acid is close to battery acid ? Around the 5th day I was a little more aware of things and asked about the meds. I had to convince the head nurse to call my doctors about my meds. I only took those ONLY AS NEEDED and only ONE at a time and NOT DAILY. They had me squirting like a goose. They had me in heavy diapers , bed pad and changing every half hr to an hour. The pain of clean up was bad beyond belief. I left in diapers and had to use a diaper paste I call it. Was alot thicker. Took almost three weeks to heal. Diaper rash and yeast infections are horrible ? to deal with. Besides the hole in my chest that opened up and drained and the pain after. All things I suggest everyone should avoid if possible. But I did survive with lots of therapy. But the PTSD from the many resuscitation and being zapped like a bug has dragged on. Can't wait to get ride of covid mask as they set things off.

Sorry for rambling, sometimes issues are hard to deal with when know one is around.

[Kingdark]

When I had surgery on my back to correct my scolioze a second time, (long story, I might get into detail later) I was really nervous. Anyway, I had a bit of a diarehea or at least the feeling that it was like that. Anyway, long story short, I asked the staff to put a diaper on me, because of that and that I wouldn't want an accident to happen in the middle of surgery. (That makes sense right?)

The point I'm getting to though, is that I couldn't pee for a long time after. The nurses tried to put a cathether in me, but I was so tense that it hardly worked at all. I just couldn't relax. I asked the nurses to help me on the toilet a few times or for permission to go there on my own and eventually, I managed to go. I remember that it felt very weird, almost like burning.

Conclusion: there are drugs that can prevent you from peeing after surgery. Though, I did ask if they could give me something, so I would HAVE to pee, but they had to get the doctors permission for that.

[anned]

Two years ago i had a stent put in and they used a condom cath. i had a 5 way bypass in 2006.

Since they numb the area right next to it to do the angioplasty it also numbed the bladder and i could not pee.

After about 8 hours i suddenly had to go but could not.

They did a ultrasound and my bladder was way over full. And they put in an interment catheter and drained out 1200 ml.

Then do to my bladder being over full and then using the interment catheter i had blood filling my bladder and clotting and i still could not pee.

Then they had to put in a Foley catheter and took a 500 ml syringe and started pumping about 300 ml of water in and out to break up the clots

They did that for about 6 hours till the water was not bright red with blood and was just pink.