Living With A Urinary Catheter › Forums › General Discussion › Catheter put in for bowel cancer op. still there more than 4 months later. Help! › Reply To: Catheter put in for bowel cancer op. still there more than 4 months later. Help!
Christina,
Fortunately, the bladder doesn’t suffer permanently from inactivity. Even people that are in extended comas can regain their bladder function with time. It does shrink to some degree, but like I said, mine stretched back out within weeks of being used again.
Normally, bladder function is completely lost for one of three reasons… The first is a stricture or other obstruction, another is because of nerve damage that won’t allow the muscles to relax in order to open the urethra, and the third is damage to the muscles surrounding the bladder itself. When these muscles become either too rigid or too stretched out, they can have trouble squeezing the urine out.
Aside from traumatic injury, all of these usually have symptoms that appear before things stop working completely. A urologist can do a neurological workup to see if your bladder is working normally, or at least should be.
Obviously I can’t give you a definitive answer one way or the other, since I’m not a urologist, or a doctor for that matter, but until a specialist runs the tests, I wouldn’t assume anything.
I hope you find an answer, and let us know what you find out.
Clayton