THE QATSPY® Quapaw Aviation Tiger Sports Performance Yukan
By: Charles W. Boatright, President & CEO of THE QATSPY® An Aviation Sports Apparel and Gear Company
How to Get a Leg Up on Your Recovery of Prostate– There are certain side effects that you will have to deal with to overcome, but You Can. One is incontinence that can last between 4- weeks to 6- months; take the appropriate action needed
The most vulnerable position for one side effect, incontinence, is the standing position that can come into play especially bending over at the hips to pick up or to dress. Avoid at all cost bending at the waist not just during your prostate recovery, but even after, to prevent lumbar back injuries. You don’t want to go back into the hospital for back surgery or have reduced maneuverability.
As a golfer, we make sure that we bend at the hips and turn at the waist for making our tee-to-green golf shots. I do the same thing during my strength and yoga workouts. Stepping forward with one foot, like in a lunge, will allow you to bend at the knee and hips and keep your lumbar in the neutral position.
Before I retire as a Grid Engineer with a utility, along with my engineering duties of designing, constructing, and maintaining transmission lines, I was on the Fall Protection Committee where I served as the Chairman for the entire 4- state company. Developing devices were part of our duties was to help linemen in their climbing.
I was having difficulties putting on my disposable underwear (Depends®) not just due to my four (4) knee surgeries and hip replacement that interferes with my maneuvering and stability. We all want to maintain our independence as much as possible, so I developed what I call THE SADDLE BRACKET, shown below. The main idea of the Saddle Bracket is to prevent a fall.
To help with me putting on my disposable underwear at age 66, I made a Saddle Bracket with scrap plywood (3/4″ x 5″ x 16″) and with (2) 3/4 ID- inch x 12″ PVC pipe as shown above. This Saddle Bracket allowed me to remain stable and prevent me bending over at the hips or falling that can cause other issues besides instability, leakage to occur, especially a few weeks after having my Prostatectomy on 05Feb2024.
I was diagnosed with Stage 2 Prostate Cancer on 04Jan2024, so a Prostatectomy was the option we chose to follow.
NOTE: Incontinence can last from a few weeks to 18- weeks after the catheter is removed, but it will go away with special therapy they call Kegel exercises.
What is nice about the Kegel exercises is that they can be done with a few Yoga Poses that I do like the Mountain Pose especially with arms extended over head, Warrior No. 1 Pose, and the Cat-Cow Stretch. When you tighten the Pelvic Floor muscles up, you want to inhale and hold for a ~20 count or 10- seconds. Then when relaxing the Pelvic Floor muscles, you want to slowly relax and slowly exhale.
The Front and Side views of the Saddle Bracket with underwear.
I’m just trying to pass on some simple things and ideas that I’m doing to help others guys and gals in their recovery process and prevent falls. This allows you to maintain a three (3) point stability (two hands and one foot at all times) standing while stepping into your disposable underwear. Believe me, if I could write about sports that I love, I would, but we are talking about life changing events. When they tell you that your have Cancer it gets your attention.
This Saddle Bracket is simple but very effective to use. Just make sure that you suspend the waistband just above the tops of the PVC Tees, as shown above, to prevent the underwear from sliding down when you step into the underwear. You just have to reach down and pull up the underwear without issues without going all the way down to the floor, and then you’re on your way.
I used a one-inch spade bit to drill the 1-inch holes into the plywood 14-inches apart and used a rubber mallet to drive the 3/4-inch (ID) Inside Diameter PVC pipe into the holes for a tight fit. You DO NOT have to glue the Tees onto the vertical pipe, I would not recommend gluing, just in case you need a 3/4″ TEE -to-1″ RUN one day. This way once you get over your incontinence issues you can disassemble the Saddle Bracket and put this period behind you.
Just remember what Ray Lewis said about Greatness- Greatness is a lot of small things done well.