For the last few years, I’ve slept with a smart watch on.  Mine is a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4.  One of the features is that it will track and rate your sleep if you wear it to bed.  It’s not the best possible way to measure one’s sleep patterns, but it’s not too bad for something as standard as a smart watch.  After each night of sleep, the watch will give you your sleep score.  85 and above is considered excellent.  70-84 is good, 55-69 is fair and below 55 is labeled as “needs attention.”  I’m not going to get into how important sleep is.  You know how you feel after getting quality sleep versus a restless night of tossing and turning.  What I am going to say is that a few weeks ago I got a score of 99.  In fact, since the surgery to remove my bladder and outfit me with a urostomy, I’ve been at 85 or above 61 times which is roughly half the nights.  Conversely, in 169 nights prior to the surgery, I was at 85 or above only 6 times.  

So, what happened?  Did something change internally?  Am I on some magic medication?  I can’t say for certain on the first, but it’s not the second one.  I believe the secret is that the small external bag I have to collect my urine output gets hooked up to a much larger, two-liter capacity, night bag when I go to bed.  One of several benefits to having a urostomy is that I never have to get up to pee anymore.

When I think back to what was going through my mind when I realized I was going to lose my bladder, there was a lot of fear and anxiety with the unknowns involved.  No one told me all of the awesome benefits that would come with it.  So, with the help of my wife, we came up with the Top Ten Benefits To Having a Urostomy. 

Just a note here, these are the views of a 47-year-old male.  And although I’m nearly 50, I still have the mind of a teenager at times.  The rest of this blog is focused on pee, peeing and other things that have to do with anatomy and bodily functions.  Also, there is a chance that after reading this you will want to have your own bladder removed.  Consider yourself warned.  Here we go:

1. Not Needing To Get Up To Pee At Night

A lot of this one was explained above, but there are a few more things about it to mention.  For starters, I don’t have to slow down my fluid intake as I get closer to bedtime.  I’m not a scientist by any stretch, but I know that staying hydrated is important to good health.  It would make sense that you would also sleep better if you were more hydrated and less dehydrated.  Also, I’d be willing to wager that several people reading this are wondering how this relates to alcohol consumption.  On one hand, if you have a few drinks in the evening, you can drink an adequate amount of water to counterbalance the dehydrating effects of the alcohol.  If you do that you are more likely to wake up with a nearly full bag (remember, 2 liters is 3 to 4 times the average human bladder capacity) than you are to wake up with a headache.  Now I would not say that it’s a license to drink as much as you want.  For one, if you pass out before hooking up to the night bag, things are going to get very messy.  There is no sensation to tell you that you are at full capacity.  Second, you may hook it up incorrectly, or not have the correct amount of awareness to avoid getting tangled in the tubing between you and the collection bag.  The likely result in  these scenarios is waking up very wet and too intoxicated to deal with it. 

2. Utilizing a Collection Bag For Road Trips

This one is very similar to the first one and is self-explanatory.  If I know I’m going on a trip that is going to be more than an hour, I can utilize a one-liter leg bag.  I suppose that I could use the night bag that is twice the size, but that would likely only be helpful if I was traveling alone.  So far in the trips we’ve taken the one-liter bag has been great and I would guess that it’s saved us many stops.

3. When It’s Empty, It’s Empty

There’s a saying I learned as a kid that applies to guys.  It goes, “No matter how you wiggle, no matter how you dance, the last drops always end up in your pants.”  Yup, the men know what I’m talking about.  That problem has been (mostly) eliminated.  The bag has a spout to drain it at the bottom.  The spout has a stopper.  When it’s empty, you put the stopper back in and that’s it.  You’re done.  I only say the problem is “mostly eliminated” because there are some tricky moments when hooking and unhooking the night or leg bags.  But that’s all preventable.  The previous problem – not so much.

4. Less Likely To Have Accidents Due To Sudden Urgency

Around the time I hit 40, I noticed that the time between feeling like I had to go and the time that I actually needed to go was decreasing rapidly.  From informal discussions, I gathered I was not alone in this revelation.  And as we all know, when it decides that it’s time to start going, it starts and there is not a whole lot you can do about it.  So that’s not an issue anymore.  That being said, if I’m not hooked up to something for increased capacity, the bag can fill up, and if it does reach capacity, it will put pressure on the adhesive seal.  But the point is that is manageable, and I don’t get hit with sudden urgency and surprise attacks.

5. If I Dream About Peeing, I’m Not Actually Peeing

You know it’s happened to you.  You’re dreaming, you start going to the bathroom in your dream, and then you wake up and…  We’ve all been there.  Most of the time we wake up and take care of business, but it was way too close for comfort.  I’ve had several dreams since the surgery that involved such things.  And of course, it was just that, a dream.  No accidents involved.

6. No Trouble With Drawstring Knots

There is nothing worse than going to untie a drawstring when you have to go and coming face to face with a difficult knot.  Trying to “hold it” while struggling with a tight knot that refuses to budge takes an intense amount of focus.  That is just one more problem that I don’t have.  After a few ostomy “fails” in a short period of time, I started using a product called a Stealth Belt.  It enables me to conceal the urostomy bag without tucking it into my pants.  It’s essentially a fanny pack, but instead of carrying around lots of useful items, I get to carry around my… you get the picture.  The bottom line is, when it needs to be emptied, I just unzip the bottom and unstop the spout.  No zipper, belt or drawstring interaction required.

7. The Stream Is No Longer Directionally Challenged

If you’re a guy, or if you live with a guy, you know that our aim sucks.  It’s not entirely our fault.  Imagine holding a sprayer on a garden hose, aiming it at the flowers you want to water, squeezing the handle, and having the water shoot ten feet to the left.  Or right.  Or both.  That’s what it’s like being a guy.  Sure, most of the time it goes where we think it is going to go, but it’s not 100%.  Probably not 90% either.  According to the women that we live with, it’s probably 0%.  Anyway, when I open the spout, it goes exactly where I expect it to.  Gravity is the only force working here.

8. I can “Legally” Urinate In Public

This one is a technicality.  It’s not something that I look forward to doing or even plan on doing.  The public urination laws (at least in Texas) are tied to indecent exposure.  Since I can drain the bag without exposing anything, no laws are broken.  Listen, it wasn’t easy finding ten things.

9. I’ll Never Need A Urinary Catheter Again

Leading up to the major surgery, I had three different procedures that required having a urinary catheter for 2 to 3 days after the surgery.  If you’ve had one, you know.  If you haven’t, you don’t want one.  Trust me.  I have a few friends that have dealt with prostate cancer and subsequent prostate removal.  They had theirs for a few weeks.  When I told one of them that I never had one for more than a few days and now I’d never have to have one again he instinctively said, “You lucky SOB” or something like that.  I think that says everything you need to know about having a urinary catheter.

And the final awesome thing about the urostomy

10. I Get To Live

All of the credit for this one goes to my wife (along with #8).  I told her about my idea to have a top ten list and I told her what I had come up with to that point.  Almost immediately she said, “How about you get to stay alive?”  And at the end of the day, that is what truly matters.  It also shows that she cares about me. But don’t tell anyone.  She likes to keep that a secret.  Of all the benefits to this life-changing surgery, this one wins the day.

So, there you have it.  It turns out that a surgery that I never wanted to have and feared when I knew it was inevitable, is not so bad after all.  Maybe it’s the positive attitude working in overdrive.  I’m not going to question it.  I’m simply going to continue moving forward and doing what I can to keep living life.