My Bladder Cancer Fight

Weight Control

Everyone knows if they are over weight.

There are many diseases and conditions where an increase in weight is detrimental to a good recovery. Two of the main conditions are Heart Disease and Cancer. In both cases, if surgery is required, we are at a higher risk if we are not at your proper weight.

Bladder cancer is the one that I have some knowledge. If you are over weight at surgery then the surgeon has a more difficult time performing the operation. In Canada the Shouldice Clinic, world renowned for their techniques and procedures of hernia repair, demand that you be the correct weight for your height and frame size. If you are over weight, they will send you home with a very strict diet to follow and tell you to come back when you have lost XX pounds. No arguments about it, this is their requirement.

I have had a weight problem all my life. It was very difficult to keep within 5 to 10 pounds of my recommended weight. As I got older, the amount of extra weight that I was carrying increased. My highest weight was 210 pounds and I am no six footer.

I was 210 pounds at time of retirement. I had the feeling that if I did not do something about this excess then it was just going to increase while sitting around in retirement.

I have always had a great love for dogs. Not ankle bitters, big dogs. My present dog is a Husky, Sheppard, Collie cross who also got up to 128 pounds. Both of us had to do something about our weight. Being retired, I could now spend more time with the dog. We began walking every morning for at least 45 minutes to 1 hour. It did not matter what the weather was like, we walked. Twice a week, we took long walks through a conservation area for 2 to 3 hours. It did not take long before both of us started to shed the pounds and I think that we both felt much better. I know that I did.

A hip replacement slowed Tigger, my dog, down a great deal. I put her on a senior dog food for inactive dogs. This has helped to maintain her weight along with exercising. She still gets around very well but has slowed down in her speed of walking. After her hip replacement we still took a trip up the east coast of USA and Canada including Labrador. Another time, we left Florida, followed the Gulf Coast over to Arizona, up to Utah and back home. Since we were camping, we ended up doing a lot of walking.

If you are over weight and need your bladder removed, you do not want to have any excess weight around the abdomen. Excess weight will cause a problem with wearing a Urostomy pouch. A lot of people can wear a pouch for 5 to 6 days before there is any evidence that it might soon begin to leak. These people have a relatively flat stomach. NO PONCH or ROLLS. The medical community advise is that you should change your pouch every 3 days. This is because bacteria grow and multiply in the pouch. Most pouches are one way but there still is the possibility of developing a kidney infection since the kidneys are connected directly to the stoma. The stoma could become infected from the bacteria in the pouch. A kidney infection is something that no Ostomy patient wants. With a big, fat abdomen you will be lucky to go a day before things are leaking.

Another big reason why you do not want to carry excess weight is that at least 10% of Urostomy patients develop a Parastomal Hernia - I did. This is a hernia around the stoma. The hernia may remain small or it can gradually increase in size. As the hernia gets bigger, the stoma begins to recede inwards. The stoma is attached to your innards and the hernia bulges up around the stoma. Before too long, the stoma is lower than the abdominal wall. This makes the wearing of a flat Urostomy pouch almost impossible. Leak after leak. They do have convex Urostomy pouches for this condition but they put a lot more pressure on area surrounding the stoma because they have a very rigid backing.

When my stoma got to a certain size, I could no longer wear a flat pouch. I was leaking daily. I switched to the convex pouches and my leak problem was solved.
BUT
I went on a 12 week camping trip from Cape Cod, north up the coast, crossed the Canadian Border, travelled all the Maritime Provinces and finally across to Labrador. With this amount of driving, the stiff backed convex Urostomy pouche, started to cause pressure sores to my skin under the pouch. By the time I got home, I had two big, raw pressure sores. Pressure sores can develop from just sitting around the house watching the boob tube. It took me a few weeks to get my skin back to normal.

These are two of the biggest reasons why bladder cancer patients should not carry to much excess weigh in the abdominal region.

If you need to do more than ‘push yourself back from the table early at meal times’ and ‘walk every day’, there are many good diet and exercise programs out there. Click on Product Picks from the menu bar at the top of this page. I have begun a list of some very good programs.

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