Patients share their experiences managing urinary incontinence after prostate cancer treatment, highlighting how interventions such as pelvic floor exercises, urethral slings, and artificial urinary sphincters can help restore continence and allow patients to maintain active, fulfilling lives.
Phillip Lavender:
We went back to the doctors and started talking to Dr. King. She became my doctor and we went through certain things. I told her about the problems that I have with my incontinence and incontinence that she addressed with me, and we did a sling. A sling is a mechanism that they put into your urethra that kind of lifts it up and helps you with your incontinence. It has done some help to that.
We've gone through some changes on that. I'm still using some pads for my incontinence, but all in all, it has not really slowed me down that much. I'm a tennis player, play tennis two or three times a week, has not stopped me that. I swim, that kind of stuff. It has kept me pretty much in my active life. Still cutting my grass, that kind of stuff, so it hasn't really slowed me down.
Kelvin Slaton:
After the surgery, I did do the Kegels as often as I had to. That was the two places I had problems with, were incontinence, which I knew was coming because he explained that to me in the meeting we had. I did as much as I could with that. I was not bad, he said it, because I only used probably any place from three to four pads a day, which was not excessive. I would wait.
I made the mistake of waiting until the pad was completely saturated, which was not a good idea, and that frustrated me. My frustration was probably brought on by myself, because if I would have changed earlier, I probably wouldn't have had the frustration I had at that time. But the incontinence... I tried my hardest for the incontinence, doing the Kegels and I went to physical therapy for it. I tried hard.
I was so close, it seemed like, at times, to being continence-free, that I would have control of my bladder. I don't know what happened down the line, but I did wind up getting an artificial sphincter, which took care of that. That was a blessing in disguise. It was something else to be added on to the prostate surgery in my book, but it was well worth it.
The only problems I have with the artificial sphincter is sometimes how I sit, because it would put pressure on the sphincter. But other than that, I've never had a problem with it and it's always been controllable, and not that I'm a big drinker, but I can socially drink at any occasion and not have to worry about any kind of leakage.