TexasCHLforum.com

John,

Sounds like you've got a good attitude. That will carry you a long way. I'm glad to see you doing so well.

Ahh yes, the little bags. While they can be a pain I must admit that, in my case at least, they offered some advantages. My problem was bladder cancer, and the docs fixed that by snatching that rascal right out of me. Living without a bladder would be quite inconvenient. Fortunately for me, medicine has progressed to the point that they were able to make a new one for me using part of my small intestine.
For about 5 weeks while we were waiting on everything to heal, I had an urostomy bag attached to my side. Additionally I had a foley catheter to remove anything that made it around the shunts to my shinny new store bought bladder. The urostomy bag had a valve with a tube connection at the bottom. I ran tubes from it and the catheter to a bag on my lower leg. Of course, there was a drain valve on that bag. I could "relieve" myself by opening that bag and standing there nonchalantly. I didn't have to find a tree to stand behind, because nothing was exposed. Unless somebody was standing right on top of me, they'd never know what was going on.
Before the surgery I couldn't take a car trip of more than an hour without a bathroom stop. And forget sitting all the way through a movie. Now all I needed was to make sure I was using a big enough bag, and I could sit through the longest movie while sucking the the straw of the biggest super sized drink the theater sold.
If I had to live with the bad, I was darn sure going to get all the mileage I could out of the good.

I just now saw this thread. I'm glad things have gone so well for you.