On Saturday morning I was ready to go for a pee prior to our walk around the hospital, but when I stood in front of the toilet all I could do was stare at the wall, bat around the junk a bit and curse/laugh at the idea that we can add an ineffective urinary trac to my recent inability list.
I knew this was going to be an ordeal, I have had catheter issues in the past and neither the nurse nor I have enjoyed the process.
I knew the nurse was not going to enjoy this process, she just didn't know it yet. As it was pulled out of the 2.5 foot long bag the catheter had an ominous scary look to it. Which was pretty much exact opposite look of the sweet naive nurse. Even if you've done a lot of catheters you ain't tested till you have given Jimmy Button a try.
But no one know how complicated my Johnson is till they start trying to manhandle it into submission.
After 8 minutes of ramming, jamming, attempting different angles or approaching including twisting she finally gave up on the initial catheteter and had to move to a larger more solid one. A 16 instead of the 14. Sounds fun right?
Fortunately it worked. And we voided 550 ml.
Well it turns out that I needed another void again and as suspected I couldn't void - due to the morphine volumes rending Dick inoperable. Quickly we began work on a permanent catheter as there was a good chance with the large volume of pain killers that this problem was going to continue. And I was having lots of fluids (saline solution and antibiotics) so urinating was constant.
This next insertion was even worse than the first. It took three nurses many attempts using two different gauged catheters before magic hands Nurse Liz appeared on the scene and pulled out the special 18 guage french coudee tip catheter and inserted in one stroke. Pain was finally over but not after Peter looked like road kill with blood and hematomas all over him.
After a while Willy started getting oozy so there was discussion of infection, so we took swabs and sent to the lab.
Somewhere along the way though, and maybe out of sympathy for Thor, one of the nurses took the catheter out.
Of course this felt good but I was thinking that just maybe it wasn't so wise to take the catheter if the possibility remained that all the drugs render you unable to pee on your own.
Well time came that we needed to put in another catheter.
And this sucked. Or this really blew. Or it sucked and blowed at the same time.
This next attempt was possibly the worst of all and no more details are needed other than it took four hours. And at one point they were just going to put a needle into Nimrod and send me by ambulance to the Rocky View for surgery.
In the end Magic Liz came along with her 18 guage french coudee tip and saved the day. This time however it wasn't without additional trauma and required the support of copious drugs. Nurse Kendra was there to witness the battle zone and we had many chuckles as I was thoroughly top level stoned. I asked her to write out the concoction for me to include in this blog.
Morphine and Fentanyl for pain and the Ativan to relax me enough for Magic Liz to break the code of Jimmy's little Button.
18 guage french coudee tip has been with me ever since and I gotta say he's not so bad as long as you don't mess with him.
PS headline written whilst in psychedelic post battle zone.