Urgent - how to get bladder to drain when MD screws up script

I hope you’re leaving to go to the ER.

Dude, tamsulosin is generic Flomax.

If your situation is as bad as it seems, why the hell aren’t you en route to the ER? Seriously, I can’t understand this. Either you’re totally delusional (a strong possibility) or are simply fishing for sympathy.

Docusate is a stool softener.

I’m not sure if this is a cry for help or what, but just in case: Please don’t decide to kill yourself while you’re “fried and desperate”. Those are not the conditions in which to be making any kind of irrevocable decision. First go to the ER, let them give you a catheter and hopefully get your pain managed long enough for you to get some sleep.

I respect your right to make end-of-life decisions, but surely they should be made with a clear head if possible.

If you’re still reading this and you’re not just killing time while waiting at the ER, * do not put anything into your urethra or your bladder that is not an actual medical-device urinary catheter AND you know how to use it. *

Especially not a rigid item like coat hanger wire. There are “wire” catheters that are used under certain circumstances, but they’re made to be flexible and springy. Just don’t.

OMG, no, don’t make a DIY catheter! :eek: Nonononono. Just don’t. Don’t ever stick anything up your nethers that wasn’t designed for the purpose. :smack:

And that is why you follow medical advice on the internet at your own risk. For every experienced professional there is someone without a clue giving dubious (and potentially dangerous) advice such as making DIY catheters.

When this happened to me, I went straight to the ER. After they drained by bladder, they sent me immediately to a urologist. He prescribed:

Finasteride (Flomax) 5mg and Tamsulosin HCl 0.4mg, daily

Inability to pee is a really, really horrible experience, but these meds have been working beautifully for a few years. Except, now I’ve developed the opposite problem, urge incontinence. Getting older is a bitch.

I always wonder that with this sort of thread. There seems to be a standard formula in which the OP describes an increasingly dire medical condition, while completely ignoring the repeated suggestions that it obviously warrants a trip to the emergency room.

Nitpick: Finasteride is Proscar or Propecia. Flomax is a brand name for tamsulosin.

If you can’t pee…

  • you might genuinely have kidney failure, in which case you aren’t making pee, and should be under real medical care, like a urologist or maybe on dialysis. If you aren’t GET TO AN ER

  • you might be producing urine, but it can’t leave your bladder. Your bladder can only stretch so far It might rupture. Or it might back up in to your ureters, possibly blowing out one of them. Or it can back up into your kidneys. This happened to my spouse due to bladder cancer. It required epic levels of morphine and Valium to get him to stop screaming and they wound up installing tubes in his kidneys to drain off the urine. Let me be graphic - they drill holes in you, one for each kidney, and run a tube from your skin surface into your kidneys, through various sorts of meat and tissue. These tubes then drain into plastic bags that you will find quite awkward - you’ll roll over on them at night while you’re sleeping, they’re painful if they get tugged, they’re hard to wear under clothing. The spouse grudgingly admits this is better than a non-draining bladder/fluid on the kidneys/ureters threatening blow out but none of it is fun and will only add to your misery. So, if that’s the case GET TO AN ER to either get your bladder catherized or your kidneys catheterized.

Bottom line - neither of the above can be treated at home, by an amateur, with improved equipment. GET TO AN ER.

:smack: You’re right. I take them together, and got the names confused.

You ain’t the only one. I think it’s the "f"s.

People get Flonase and Flomax confused all the time too. Including me. :smiley:

Well, something broke loose at 01:00 today. Bladder drained (mostly).

Of course, that means I got 4 hours of sleep.
And: UCD doc said she’d call this (Flomax) in on 3/9.

I just now called for the 3rd time to get it called in to the pharmacy.

They still won’t make the “PCP” available - her absence is extended by a week every time she is supposed to return.

This is one of the “treat symptoms, let the specialists find the disease” types - fine if you just need scripts written - for edema and pruritus (itch) I got skin creme. WebMD said Gabapentin 300 mg.

My symptoms are a friggin’ road map of kidney failure - and nobody put the pieces together until I was 95% dead.

You ever hear “it won’t be long now - her kidneys shut down”?

It is a matter of days - if it wasn’t for the off-the-scale spinal pain, it would have been a pleasant enough passing.

Osteoarthritis as a life-saving intervention - MD students - there is a good angle for a paper!

Broomie -

yeah, I really do have kidney failure - from 2/16 at ER:
CREATININE BLOOD 4.25 mg/dL 0.44 - 1.27 mg/dL H
E-GFR, NON-AFRICAN AMERICAN 13 >60 L
We both seem to be getting way too much of medical knowledge these days.

They still won’t let me see the 3/9 results, despite my setting to auto-release everything, including the “come in to discuss your results” tests.

It’s looking like weed derivatives for pain and lawyers for everything else. :frowning:

Best to you and yours