Looking after your internal urine pouch

After your operation

After your operation, you have a catheter in the new opening on your ​abdomen​ (stoma). This drains your urine. You have the catheter while your body heals. It is in place for about 6 weeks after your operation. 

You go home with the catheter in place. Your nurse will show you how to care for it. 

After this time you’ll come back into hospital. Your doctor or nurse will remove the catheter. Your stoma nurse will then teach you how to empty your pouch and wash it out.

How to empty your urine pouch

You empty urine from the pouch by putting a catheter into the stoma. This is called self catheterisation. Your stoma nurse shows you how to do it. 

How often do I empty my pouch?

To start with, you empty the pouch every 2 hours or so. As the pouch gradually stretches, you empty it every 4 to 6 hours during the day.

What you need

To empty your pouch you need:

• a disposable catheter

• lubricating gel

• a container to drain urine into, or access to the toilet

• gauze / tissues

You may also want a mirror to begin with to be able to guide the catheter into your stoma.

At first, you might drain the urine into a container. This is so that your nurse can keep a record of how much urine you are passing each time. After a while you can drain the urine straight into the toilet.

Draining the pouch

You don't have to worry about keeping everything free from germs (sterile) when you self catheterise. But try to be as clean as possible. You want to keep the risk of introducing an ​infection​ as low as you can. It’s best not to touch the end of the catheter that you are going to put into the stoma.

To empty your internal pouch you should:

• wash your hands

• open the catheter packaging

• open the gel

• take out the catheter and moisten the blunt end with water or gel (unless it is pre lubricated)

• look at your stoma to check it is clear of any mucus

• use a tissue with warm water to wipe away any mucus

• make sure one end of the catheter is in the container or toilet ready to collect urine

• gently feed the catheter into your stoma

• keep feeding the catheter in until urine starts to come out, then insert it a further 4 to 6 cm

• drain the urine into the container or toilet

• when no more urine comes out insert the catheter in a little more to make sure no more urine is left inside

• gently remove the catheter out of your stoma

• throw the catheter away

• wash your hands

Sometimes you may have trouble getting the catheter in. If this happens, try pulling it back a bit and gently pushing it in again. It can help to roll the catheter between your fingers as you put it in.

Washing out your urine pouch

Washing out your pouch is also called irrigating the pouch. Mucus can build up inside the pouch. So you might need to wash this out regularly. If mucus builds up in the pouch, the stoma can stop draining properly. You can develop bladder stones or problems with infection. 

How often do I wash out my urine pouch?

Your specialist nurse tells you how often you need to do this. It varies, and the advice is different for each person.

What you need

To wash out your pouch you need:

• a disposable catheter

• lubricating gel

• cooled boiled water for irrigating

• 50ml catheter syringe

• container for your the waste, or access to a toilet

Washing out the pouch

Start by emptying the urine out of your pouch with the catheter. But leave the catheter in after the urine has all drained out. Then:

• pull up the irrigating solution into the syringe

• fit the syringe onto the end of the catheter

• gently push the end of the syringe in so that the water is pushed into your pouch

• disconnect the catheter and empty the contents into the toilet or gently withdraw the contents (follow the advice given to you by your stoma nurse)

• fill the syringe again and repeat

• keep irrigating and emptying the syringe until there is no more mucus and the fluid that comes out is clear

• gently pull out the catheter and throw it away

Your doctor or stoma nurse might prefer you to use sterile salt water solution (saline) or bottled water. Different people prefer one solution to another, but they are all fine to use. You can use bottled water to wash out the pouch if you’re away from home.

The amount of mucus your pouch produces might decrease with time. So you may be able to irrigate less often. Eating certain foods, colds or hay fever will also cause more mucus to develop. You can eat less of these foods to reduce the amount of mucus you produce.