Saturday, 4th November, 2023
And there it stopped.
Curious week.
Recap. We stopped in the pub for lunch on the way back from Urology. Celebration mode almost. Just the knowledge of what had been causing my distress over the last four weeks — and three mis-diagnosees of a constantly full, inflamed and pressurised bladder not emptying correctly and being fried everyday, and now being ‘fixed’ by the catheter — was a kind of ‘closure’ result. Body internally a bit battered and very uncomfortable on top of the therapy, but psychologically all good. Get home, take my trousers down. The bag is full of red, bright red, liquid. It looks more blood than urine. Tracey happens to be in the room, she’s horrified. To be fair, it doesn’t look vey pleasant.
Ring 111.
A whole bunch of catch-all questions, despite telling them exactly what the problem was. All I want is a number for Urology. They can’t put me through to Urology. My Doctors’ surgery can’t give me a number for Urology either. (?). Distress on top of distress. In the meantime, Tracey has looked it up. Ring Urology. Nothing to worry about, it’s quite normal.
Normal?
What a week. Weeeee-k. Excuse the pun. My default sleeping position is on my right side, right leg forming a tent pole (for the quilt) over the left, right foot resting on the left calf. This is an MS-derived position arrived at over many years. The catheter bag is tied to my left thigh and sits between my legs. If I’m on my side it obviously can’t fill (it’s being squeezed shut.) Likewise my second position, on my right side, left leg similarly hooked. Not possible. I have to sleep on my back. The night before last, the Thursday, the catheter tube came out, somehow the geometry of biology meant sleeping on my left side somehow rubbing thighs unhooked it, and with the end of the catheter tube in my bladder there are no wake-up-and-have-a-wee-now triggers so I leaked blood-filled urine over my bed clothes for an hour. Fortunately, the mattress is protected. It was incredibly disappointing to return to the experiences of the last few weeks, sleeping in an extended wet patch with a towel beneath me, but also informative. Don’t go to sleep on your side …
I had been reminded of an experience early in my frying schedule. I’d needed to go for a wee and didn’t want to fill my nappy, so went to the loo. The nurse was coming passed to call me as I came out of the loo and became a bit agitated. Oh, you’ve voided, you need a full bladder. (If I had to re-fill my bladder the twenty minute delay means the schedule takes a hit). They decided to take me into the chamber room anyway and ultra-sounded my bladder to be surprised to find it was full enough to be doing the correct pushing of organs into place and they could go ahead with the treatment. Flash forward to the 30th, again the surprising result of an ultra-sound to find I still had a full bladder after having been for a wee. A conversation with the consultant going round in circles until Tracey mentions MS. Cartoon slapping of the forehead moment followed by a ‘Doh!’ from him ‘Of course! MS!’
A catheter is needed.
The squeal was because, once the catheter was inserted, a process which brought a frown to my forehead itself, they took 930ml of liquid out of my bladder. So, let’s think about that a moment. 4/5ths of a litre of liquid, pressurising the walls of the bladder and squeezing the kidneys up and the prostate and bowel across, is suddenly lanced and has to try and escape out of a hole the circumference of the tube in my dick. A/ this was high pressure and B/ it took a while. And then another while for the effects to fade. All the while a strikingly attractive and exotic (Portuguese) Sister and her assistant were strapping a new bag to my leg and telling me all about future catheter management. I didn’t hear a word . . .
In one way it feels like I’ve ‘lost’ ten weeks of my life, like the previous ten years feels like I was in prison (my life post-family marriage living on my own in Cheltenham before I moved to south Hampshire). But I haven’t. I’ve been doing whatever caterpillars do before they become butterflies. And only ten weeks is cheap. As Boston said, it’s more than a feeling, but I haven’t read a book in ages. I’ll give myself till Wednesday, I think it takes ten days for internal trauma to stabilise and begin to heal, I think frying an MS-damaged bladder might even be big trauma. The funny thing is, I was going to say, to get back to normal. Here’s the thing, there is no ‘normal’ for me to get back to. It’s all new, fresh. Nothing but Christmas presents. Hopefully, if I start to sleep again, I can recalibrate the bits, the few bits, of me from my old life I want to keep and start whole again. Reborn.