If you are early in your post surgery incontinence journey and struggling with progress please take comfort in my experience. No guarantees but recovery time is longer for some of us.
My prostate cancer was confirmed via biopsy in January 2025 and I opted for a robotic prostatectomy at the end of February. Surgery went well and the surgeon was happy with the nerve sparing procedure. My biggest concern was incontinence, and I received many assurances that being early 50’s and relatively fit I should be recovered within a few weeks to 3 months.
Post surgery I walked everyday and did my Kegels religiously. Unfortunately, I was leaking constantly and could not hold any urine in my bladder unless I sat still. I got through multiple level 3 pads daily with random incontinence during the night. The situation slowly chipped away at my original positive mental attitude, leaving me quite depressed after 3 months of very little improvement. Then around 18 weeks I noticed I was able to retain some urine after a walk – small be definite progress.
Wondering if I’m doing something wrong I did more research and stumbled upon “a touchy subject”, a prostate cancer support group in Australia. I found their videos and advice was much more aligned to my experience and made me realise that I need to be patient and give it a year for the muscles and importantly the peripheral nerves to recover and can take up to 18 months. Over the coming months I saw steady improvement albeit very sporadic and unpredictable. I felt muscle fatigue was sometimes the cause more that exertion but it varied day to day. At six months I was down to two level 1 pads a day. At 8 months I was using one level 1 pad, or two level 0 pads and only doing Kegels once a day. By 9 months it was one level 0 pad a day. Now at 10 months I have arrived pad free during the day and night – but carry a level 0 pad just in case. It is not 100% back to normal. I get the odd random leak but nothing alarming and only typically with a high level of exertion. I’m happy with this but hoping to get 100% control in next 2-3 months. If you are early in your incontinence journey and struggling with progress please take comfort in my experience. No guarantees but recovery time is longer for some of us.