catheter anyone?

I’ve had more interaction with medical professionals in the last month than I like. It all began three weeks ago when I found myself unable to urinate. As you might imagine my bladder began to fill to overflowing, but it didn’t overflow. After eight hours of this situation my husband tried to catheterize me. When that didn’t work, he called for emergency medical attention, and they sent us two young emergency medical techs, Rhonda and Eileen. They were 22 and 25 years old respectively. I’m not sure how many penises they had seen in their lives. Eileen decided to try her hand at the catheter. So she pushed it on in, then to the left a little, then to the right, but she ultimately had no success. Everyone decided I should go to the emergency room. So I was loaded into the ambulance and off I went.

In the emergency room, five more people, nurses and doctors, tried to catheterize me. I imagined myself sort of like a carnival game. There was probably a sign outside my curtained alcove that said, “win a giant panda, catheterize the rube inside”. After four hours of this, a urologist showed up. He said, “I’ve got a little trick to this; it will only take a minute.” 10 minutes later he too gave up on the catheter. So he made a tiny incision in my abdomen and inserted a tube directly into my bladder. Finally, there was joy in Mudville again. He collected A LOT of urine.

I was discharged to home with the tube coming out of my belly and emptying urine into a clear plastic pouch. I went back to the urologist’s office four days later to see if the trauma had cleared enough in my penis for him to insert a scope and look at what was going on. No success. So we made arrangements for me to go to the hospital the next day and have a catheter surgically implanted into my bladder through the penis, under general anesthesia this time.

When I awoke from anesthesia, the little incision in my abdomen was sewn up, and there was a catheter coming out of my penis and connecting to a clear plastic bag. Ah, what a beautiful ignorance anesthesia provides. The urologist told me that the catheter was held in place by a small balloon that had been inflated inside my bladder. Now I could definitely qualify as a circus sideshow with balloons and everything. The next morning as Tom was digitally cleaning the tip of my penis and the area around my abdominal surgeries, the catheter slipped out and fell on the floor. Tom shrieked. Then he called for emergency medical assistance again. This time the entire crew from firehouse 11 showed up. There must have been 15 firefighters in full regalia wandering around our apartment looking at the art, evaluating the furniture. I wondered to myself: are these actually realtors dressed like firemen? Eventually they got me to the hospital where the urologist inserted a new catheter.

Today after three weeks, my penis has finally stopped bleeding. I’m still connected to a clear plastic jug and will discover this Friday if I ever get to have it removed and return to the more typical urinary configuration. I’m sure my little story here has made many men wince as they read it; I’m sorry for that.