Two-stage urethroplasty: stage 2, day 14 after surgery – catheter removal

About four hours driving today for a 15 minute hospital appointment but neither I nor the surgeons who did the urethroplasty really trust my local urology department.

The surgeon seemed very happy with the appearance of the wound. I agree, they did some really neat suturing. There’s one suture at the foreskin end that’s sticking out a bit and he said I could remove that myself.

He pulled out the catheter without any trouble and it wasn’t really any more uncomfortable than usual. I had an early lunch and had a pee before getting back in the car, my first normal pee since October 2015! The flow seemed good and strong and it wasn’t too painful.

Later in the day it was getting a bit more painful and there was a hint of blood but I’m guessing that’s just irritation of the wound on the inside.

The only instructions I got were no sex or cycling for another two weeks and to generally avoid strenuous exercise that might affect that area. Once I get to four weeks after surgery I can apparently do whatever I want.

I’ll have an appointment at my local hospital in about a month for a urine flow measurement. The surgeon was very emphatic that they shouldn’t do anything else and I should contact him with any questions rather than the local urology department.

Two-stage urethroplasty: stage 2, day 4 after surgery

We walked into town for lunch today and the only problem I had was the usual discomfort from the urethral catheter.

I’d had a shower earlier in the morning and my husband changed the dressing for me afterwards. That meant that I got to see how the wound looks and get some pictures.

It’s looking surprisingly good, considering what my penis has been through over the last few years. Not very much bruising and really neat suturing, you can hardly see the stitches. At the foreskin end you can see that the wound veers off to one side; I think that’s where the surgeon took a little bit of skin to repair the fibrotic area from the temporary urethral opening that was there.

After the failed surgery

I got a really good night’s sleep back at home, apart from the usual thing of waking up every time I rolled over to make sure the catheter tube was OK.

Back at the hospital I had a short wait until the doctor came on rounds. He said he’d told theĀ x-ray people to make me an appointment in a couple of weeks and discharged me. I returned home with a big bag of catheter and dressing supplies and went back to work after lunch.

The district nurse at my GP surgery called me at work during the afternoon to make an appointment to have my dressing changed. We can mostly handle that ourselves but it will a useful opportunity to get more supplies and maybe some advice on the best way to deal with the catheter.

One problem is showering. No matter how hard we try we can’t find a way of arranging the dressing so that water doesn’t run along the catheter tube and soak the inside of the dressing. That means I need to change it every time I shower and I end up only showering every other day.

The bladder spasms haven’t been as bad this time around, probably because I immediately asked for medication to prevent them. One positive sign has been that I’ve actually been able to pee a little bit, even though the suprapubic catheter isn’t letting pressure build up. That suggests that the inflammation in my urethra is going down already.

Waiting for follow-up appointment

I never got a reply from the surgeon to my message about my wound reopening. It closed up again within a day or two and now the wound is looking pretty good, it’s not even very visible any more. The odd sensations from regrowing nerves now seem to mostly be in my foreskin instead of along the wound.

I did get a letter with a date for my follow-up appointment. Seems like they’d forgotten about it until I reminded them, again. With it being peak summer holiday season it was apparently impossible to give me an appointment in the period they originally told me (4-6 weeks after the removal of the catheter) and I’m going on vacation myself so the appointment’s not until the end of August.

Updates here will be sparse until the appointment, unless something interesting happens. I’m really hoping that nothing interesting happens.

Wound trouble

I got a bit of a fright on Friday night when the wound on my penis reopened. I was peeing before going to bed and I felt something wet on the underside of my penis. I thought it was maybe just sweat but when I moved my hand there was blood on it. My shout of surprise brought my husband to the bathroom and we had a look.

It turned that about 1 mm of the wound at the end furthest from the scrotum had opened up and was bleeding slightly. Apparently this can happen with wounds as the collagen that forms the original scar is replaced, it’s called dehiscence.

We washed the wound and stuck a dressing on it and by Saturday morning it was looking much better. Now it looks the same as it did before it reopened. We’ve been using steri-strips to try to reduce tension on that part of the scar.

I’m still waiting for my follow-up appointment, so I sent a message to the surgeon telling him about the reopening and reminding him about my follow-up. I’m hoping I’ll get an appointment before I go on vacation later in the month.