Grampa had a procedure done on his prostrate last week. They put a catheter in him til this morning, when someone - mom or dad - would pull it out.
Only grampa’s funny like that, so he yanked the catheter out himself.
There is a bulb on the end inside that is filled with water. One is supposed to remove the water before removing the catheter so a ball the diameter of a quarter doesn’t get pulled through the urethra.
Guess what grampa forgot to do?
When I was awoken and told to clean the house up I was worried. But not as worried as I was when I walked into the bathroom and saw what looked like a slaughter house.
There was a LOT of blood
He’s home again, and fine (mostly), and the catheter’s back in for another week. At least they made an appointment for it to be taken out at the OFFICE.
About three years ago, my cat had a really nasty bout of FUS and had to be catheterized. They actually used a little STITCH to keep it in. The next morning, they found he’d removed it himself…YOWWWWWW!
Catheters are horrible. Can’t say I blame either of them for wanting them out. But…!
A foley catheter has a sort of tube within a tube. The foley is inserted with the bulb deflated and when it is in place the bulb is usually inflated with 5-10 cc of sterile water–aproximately the size of a cherry tomatoe.
I have many catheter stories and I’ll only share a couple with you.
Once I was called into the room by a guy about 95 years old who said “Nurse, I can’t find the end of my penis. I don’t mind but I’m not sure how it happened” He was feeling the approximately about 2 feet of catheter that leads to the drainage bag and apparently thought that somehow his penis had grown to about 2 1/2 feet long overnight.
Another time we heard a slightly confused man start screaming all of a sudden so everyone ran to the room to investigate. We found the poor fellow several feet from the bed with the drainage bag still attached to the bed and the foley still in place but stretched as far as it would go. He said “Woman, this is the damnedest way I have ever seen to tie a man up”
When I was 5 years old, I had to go into the hospital for about a week. I had a catheter, and somehow, I ripped it out in my sleep. My mom had gone outside to smoke a cigarette, and the nurse came running in when I started screaming. I don’t know how I did this, but I remember looking at the nurse and saying “don’t tell my mom!” because I thought I would get in trouble. But nothing describes the pain involved. Tell your grandpa it hurts a LOT less when the nurses take it out.
Man, oh man… I’m torn between wincing in sympathy for your Gramps, and laughing. Owwww… I’ll be a lot more people here are going to pay more attention to what the doctors/nurses tell them!
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For those of you who can’t get enough of this kind of thing, how about when you fall asleep and the bag slides off and is just hanging off the end of the bed and as it slowly fills all night the weight of the bag starts pulling… internally… on your bladder. And that’s what wakes you up, a full catheter bag dragging its weight against the balloon that is inflated within your bladder… mmmmmm. Now that’s a strange feeling.
When my lil guy was in the hospital last week, they had to insert a catheter to get a urine sample. Damn, as they kept pushing it in farther and farther I was gagging, sheesh it looked so painful. I kept thinking, where the hell are they pushing all that tubing to? He’s only 11.
And for you guys snickering over there…well…yeah. I’m torn between feeling sorry for him and smacking him upside the head. You’d figure he’d have STOPPED when it started hurting, ya know?
He seems to be fine today, but he’s walking kinda funny.
