Did I mention my bladder issues after the stent was taken out? I'm too lazy to go check, so here goes...

This had never happened to me before, but for whatever reason, when the stent was removed, I had to pee constantly. Bladder spasms were abound and were threatening to reeeally piss me off. I felt a CONSTANT need to pee, even if I had just peed - worse than any UTI I've ever had. It was so bad I could hardly stand the 5 minute car ride to pick my girls up from school.

This didn't necessarially start while the stent was in, in that up until the ureteral stent was taken out, I had to pee at relatively normal intervals, but I do believe the stent and 8 stones combination messed my bladder up somehow.

So I googled the condition and came across a website written by a urologist who suggested re-training your bladder before trying medical intervention. He suggested urinating every 2 hours whether you had to go or not. At first this didn't make sense and seemed contradictory since I was going constantly, but I quickly realized he meant pee on a schedule every two hours, and then as needed in between...duh, right? Ya. It took a second for me to get what he was talking about because I was in so much distress. :)

So, I peed every two hours plus as needed inbetween, and I kid you not, in a matter of 2 or 3 days, things started getting back to normal. As of today, I am 99.9% back to normal. The last thing to go was this insane urge to pee. In other words, I was able to wait for normal lengths of time before peeing, but when I had to go OMG watch out! I spent the last couple days of the ordeal sprinting to the toilet, but things have finally settled down. Retraining doesn't mean that in the end you will feel an urge to urinate every 2 hours. It just helps your bladder settle down and should eventually return you to a perfectly normal pattern.

Long story short, if you have bladder spasms whether due to a UTI, or some kind of acute trauma, try re-training your bladder before looking into medical interventions. Of course see your doctor if antibiotics are necessary, but hopefully this advice will help people who are too shy to bring something like this up to a doctor. If you're like me, you spend waaay too much time at the urologist's office as it is.