Tumour removal and after care

Hi Jonty11f099 and welcome to the group. Good advice for others. We know how any strenuous exercise following a TURBT can cause setbacks. I hope you are well at the moment. Best wishes.

Best wishes for your continuing recovery from the 2nd tumour removal. Bleeding and clots are bearable but do drain you of energy if it continues over several weeks, or months in my case back in 2017/18. I hope you are able to have the catheter removed soon. Life is a lot more normal without one!  I've been unable to function without one so have had to  get used to long term Foley urethral catheters ever since my 2nd TURBT in 2018. However, it's surprising what you can get used to.  My son in law is visiting Barcelona today on business. He left a thoroughly miserable, cool and wet UK early this morning and is now enjoying Spanish warmth.

Keep to the rules and you'll hopefully be absolutely fine this time.  Ray  

Hi Jonty11f099,

Glad you are progressing well after the second TURBT and I hope that continues. It is important to follow what our doctors say and I know how worried partners can become. However, gentle exercise helps many of us after an operation and my doctors insisted on it before the bladder removal. So I think I would say that it is most important to do what you feel benefits you most.

My TURBT found muscle-invasive cancer (requiring chemo and bladder removal) although I had very little bleeding after it (and no infections) even though most of the cancer remained embedded in the muscle. I carried on as normal.

For most of the 4 months before the operation to remove my bladder I was not bleeding at all. I felt OK from the start and continued doing as much activity as I could for as long as possible - 30 minutes daily fast walking up and downhill, gym and Pilates) Walking is good for bladder patients and my hospital also signed us up for exercise classes (on-line with Mr Motivator) to make sure we should be fit enough for the bladder-removal operation and would recover well from it. Plus the hospital prehab department rings you regularly to check you are doing the exercise. I had to tell them how many sit-to-stands I could do while they timed me. Answer none unless I pushed off with my hands on the chair but they allowed that. In between chemo sessions my work rate was not as high as before diagnosis but the chemo nearly wiped me out by the 4th cycle. 

Bleeding only started just before the cystectomy because the chemo hadn't killed all of the cancer (I had 2 types - one, more aggressive, kept growing) and for the last month after chemo I was was also injecting strong blood thinners to get rid of a clot in my lung and prevent other clots forming elsewhere in my body so they could operate - they had also discovered that I had atrial fibrillation during the pre-op full day review when they put us on a fixed cycle and made us ride it fast. (No-one knows whether the AF and the clot were from covid or chemo). At that point the bleeding was heavy: I was concerned that they might not do the cystectomy and tried to be as active as I could. 

 And they get you out of bed on day 3 after that op (once you are out of ICU) and make you walk around the ward and do the post-op physio exercises so they can discharge you quicker and so you feel mentally better. My husband and I reckon that we were back to normal within months after I got my stoma. I've built up a lot since the op and continue to drink my 2+ litres of water. 

So as you can see it all depends. Good luck with your treatment. And I hope you can reintroduce activity gradually.

Latestart

(female, aged 69 at TURBT - 4 years ago)