Sorry I haven't been online in a while. As my wife said, I've been depressed as of late. Now for the subject...
When I was being diuresed aggressively, I tried to keep up with the urinal, but the effort to sit up was too much and lying down was too messy. So I accepted the offer for a foley catheter. What I didn't realize was that the two young women, one a student (almost certainly a teenage freshman at CSI--local community college) were not that experienced. The instructor assured me she had done this before, and the insertion was not too terribly painful, as they used a local anesthetic, but apparently they didn't know how
far to insert it. I didn't feel relief from the building pressure and I had to bear down to urinate, resulting in urine coming out from around the tube onto my bed.
I couldn't get help immediately, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I could feel the balloon end pressure inside me, so I tried to push--lots of discomfort, then I thought of relaxing as if I was going to urinate, then I pushed again, while a trickle of urine came out. Suddenly I felt the end slide beyond the uncomfortable pressure point, and slip in about one inch further, and all discomfort stopped as did the dribbling urine. I tried to urinate, and, much to my relief--as it were--(no need to excuse the pun--remember I'm a former science professor!
) I felt my bladder empty painlessly--and not a drop leaked out beside the tube that time. From then on, until after it was removed, active urination was not a consideration anymore.
Removal wasn't particularly painful, either, just felt 'invasive', but in a way that to my mind was invasive as in "going to be no longer invasive very soon if I just relax and let it get pulled out." I relaxed my bladder sphincters like I was going to urinate and out came the foley without any trouble--only a slightly sickening feeling of 'dragging' on the interior of my urethra--about 2% the intensity of my chest tubes' removal. Then I had to wait a few hours until my bladder filled again. I tried to urinate, but nurses nearby plus 'bashful kidneys'--yes I know it's really bashful urethral sphincters--kept me unproductive. It took them playing a recording of running water plus having only Laura with me to finally get it out--I had a bm or two while trying as well. I really didn't want the foley back! However, from that point onward, all was well.
In another post I described, in full (as in somewhat disgusting at times) detail my intubation and extubation experience--I don't have memories of these events and, suffice it to say, I'm very glad of it. Laura's descriptions to me were plenty...
Chris
