The unspoken Truths about Hip Replacement and Bladder Function

How many of you knew that spinal anaesthetic could potentially affect your bladder function for weeks, and even months (hopefully not years!). I can only speak from experience and I’ve not yet hit a one year hip replacement anniversary, so I’ll go with ‘months’!

This isn’t something that was communicated to me at any stages of my hip journey, so I thought it would be useful to make those on the same path, aware of this situation.

When I was back to my room after the hip replacement, the nurse asked if I needed to empty my bladder. They also asked if I could feel my bladder, and at that point I couldn’t. They gave me a bed pan (still have PTSD even thinking about those awful things!) and I had to push on my belly to get the bladder moving, because I couldn’t feel it.

As I have found out after, the bladder is often the last system to fully settle after a spinal anaesthetic, and it does so gradually, sometimes very gradually, not suddenly.

Why does this happen? A spinal anaesthetic does not actually damage nerves in the vast majority of cases. What it does is temporarily interrupt how nerves communicate. Some systems (like bladder control) are especially sensitive to that interruption. And even after sensation returns, the timing of the signals can be off. It takes some time for the timings to settle back into place.

I am now 5 months post hip replacement and I can definitely say that, although I am in total control of my bladder, when I need to go - I need to go asap.

There are other factors that can aggravate this situation: perimenopause, fibroids, high level of stress, etc. It is also very individual and some can be 100% fine after just a few days post the op.

How can we improve/strengthen our pelvic floor muscles? Through a combination of exercises, breathwork and relaxation amongst other things. This is a discussion for a different day.

Hope you’ve found this somewhat informative. Knowing this pre surgery can give you that extra time to strengthen pelvic floor muscles before you get onto that operating table. Prevention is better than cure as they say 👌🏻