After care

Welsh1, you may already know this but your terminology and lack of training ,made me wonder. The bag on the leg should stay connected to the catheter for upto seven days.The night bag connects to the leg bag at night and the leg bag tap is opened so it drains into the night bag. 

If the leg bag is disconnected from the catheter it should be thrown away and a new bag fitted, this is all to do with infection control. 

I have seen where people say they remove the leg bag and fit the night bag at night and then swap them back in the morning. Apart from increasing the risk of infection there is also a risk of damaging the catheter. It was your reference to a day bag rather than leg bag that had me worried 🙂. 

Hope all goes well.

Thanks Chris 

Welsh1, what you did was spot on, sorry if my post came across wrongly, it wasn't meant too. Another tip, if you have a spare strap, put it around his ankle and the night bag tube it will help reduce the risk of pulling on the leg bag tap/night bag tube. It is 11 years since my surgery and I learnt something new today about nerve sparing. Hope his recovery goes well.

Tell him to take it easy but keep mobile, and look after yourself.

Thanks Chris 

I'm now 3 weeks post RARP and like you wasn't given any catheter instruction. At the point the catheter was removed I mentioned it and then was told how to deal with the bag overnight! Leave the day bag connected, and connect the night bag which sits at the end of the bed on its stand. When you attach the two it's worth leaving some urine in the day bag to make sure the flow into the night bag is working. They said there's no need to strap the day bag on, just let it drop over the bed but of course leave the thigh strap attached. Change the day bag every 7 days as well as the night bag. I also found that during the day changing legs is well worth doing because the thigh strap caused a really itchy rash and having relief from that during the daytime helped as did 1% hydrocortisone cream (2.5% was better used sparingly if you can get it). I also wiped down the catheter tube from penis to day bag with medical grade 0% alcohol anti-viral anti-bacterial wipes.

I had mine out 15 days after surgery and whilst I counted down each day it really wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. 

I had bi-lateral nerve sparing, retzius sparing surgery using the da Vinci SP robot and I've been fully continent after a couple of hours post catheter removal.

Good luck in your journey