Behold, I will bring it health and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth. Jeremiah 33:6
Firstly, I put off writing this post for a very long time! Secondly, you might want to leave now while you’re still ahead! I promise to be as gentle as possible in this post, but it could be rather graphic, so I won’t blame you if you leave now. And thirdly, finding an appropriate image for this post was difficult, so I went with just a generic doctor/patient post. So with all that aside, let’s begin, and remember you have been warned!
In 2019 I suffered a really serious illness call Guillain Barrè Syndrome or GBS for short. You can read about my illness starting right here! This illness cause many issue for me including being paralyzed from the neck down, being rushed to ICU and making it there with seconds to spare, and the continued disabilities that I struggle with today. This caused me to lose my job as a truck driver, which was something I’d wanted to do since I was a little boy.
Being paralyzed creates its own set of problems including the inability to feed yourself, or take care of life’s basic functions. But our bodies continue to function in their own way. One of the major issues that occurred in my body very early in my illness was an unexplained (still) failure of my kidneys to properly deal with my waste or urine! Because I was paralyzed, I had no control over my bowels or bladder. The bowel issue was handled very easily by just having it happen onto the pad that was covering my mattress and then being cleaned up afterwards. (For anyone who has never been in hospital, you leave all your dignity at the door!)
The bladder issue was a little more difficult to deal with, especially in my case as will be explained, and so extra measures needed to be taken. Final Warning, leave now or I’m not responsible for any damages caused to your mind!
Because my kidney function was severely affected, I couldn’t pass water naturally anymore, so a catheter was required. The catheter is a medical device that is inserted through the urethra into the bladder to permit draining of the bladder. The first time I had one inserted, I still had feeling in that part of my body and it was really an unpleasant experience! Definitely not high on my list of things to repeat. After the first one, I don’t remember ever feeling it being inserted, but it’s still an unpleasant procedure.
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So as I said, my kidneys were not working properly and for some reason they were emitting 200 times the normal amount of protein. This protein emerged from my bladder in brown lumpy pieces. At the end of my bed was a bag to catch the urine before it was disposed of and that bag contained the brown lumpy substance in a see through bag! All the doctors, nurses and aides, and even some of the visitors, would stop and stare at that bag when they walked passed by my bed! They’d never seen anything like it!
I’m glad I didn’t have to pass that substance naturally because I’m sure it would’ve been very painful, but it did create another problem that no one anticipated. The catheter tube is rather thin, to allow it to be inserted into a rather thin urethra and when brown lumpy substance goes through this thin tube, it has a tendency to get plugged, but no one felt this could be an issue, until it was!
Late one evening I was being looked after by a young nurse who had just transferred to my unit a few days before. I will tell you that during the seven months I was in hospital, I was a model patient. Easy to get along with, didn’t argue or get mad at my caregivers, and was a pretty nice guy, except for two occasions, and I’m about to tell you about one of them. So this nurse was on duty and I told her I felt a major pain in my bladder. I asked her if the catheter was working and she checked and said it looked like it was flowing. But I wasn’t convinced because I was feeling a pain like I had to urinate, but I had no control over it anymore because I had the catheter inserted.
She left for a bit to do other things, but it wasn’t long before I was calling for her again because I was in pain. At this point I couldn’t move my hands, so my “call button” consisted of a tube that was in front of my mouth that I would blow into to call for help. She responded to my call, checked my catheter, and said it looked ok, but that she would run a check. The check consisted of a device called a “bladder scanner” which is similar to an ultrasound and it measures how full the bladder is. When she tried to use the one on this floor, it didn’t work, of course, so she called another floor to borrow one and waited for it to arrive.
Meanwhile things are not getting any easier down below and my pain on a scale of one to ten was at about an eight and heading for twenty! I told her that the catheter was plugged and needed to be pulled, but she said it couldn’t be done without a doctor’s authorization! Did I tell you this was late in the evening? She got on the phone to call a doctor and of course he didn’t answer, the new bladder scanner had not arrived and I am at this point screaming in pain! The pain level has flown off the charts and my bladder feels like it is about to explode!
This is the first time I got really angry and demanded that she pull the catheter, which she refused to do! I think it was because she had just recently transferred to the unit and didn’t know the protocols, but I really didn’t care! Finally two things happened almost simultaneously, the phone rang and it was the doctor, and the replacement bladder scanner arrived. I was delirious with pain at this point screaming “pull it out!” over and over while she was explaining to the doctor what was going on.
The doctor asked her what the patient thinks and she told him that I thought the catheter was plugged! So the doctor told her that if he thinks that is the case then the catheter should be removed! She hung up the phone and got the new bladder scanner and scanned my bladder to find it was at 104% of capacity! I repeat, 104% of capacity! Something that I knew about half an hour ago!
The nurse removed the catheter and my bladder immediately released and continued to release for about five minutes! The relief was almost instant but the pain remained for a long time afterward. My anger eventually abated, but the memory of this incident was ingrained in me for a long time to come. I don’t discuss this incident in my public presentations, only in quiet private gatherings afterwards. This is the first time I’ve written about it also. It’s a really private thing, but as time goes by it’s just another part of my hospital journey.
So it you made it this far, you’re either very loyal to me, have a sick sense of humour, or work in the healthcare system. But whatever the case, I hope you enjoyed this little diversion from what I’ve been posting lately.
God bless
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