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Work Report - This blog originally focused on work, but it's now focusing on the collection of quotes I've accumulated.
Mike Crowl blogs in two places on Orble, and more than two on Blogger. His wife thinks he writes too much.
The following may not be for the squeamish.
Further to my ongoing business of having to wear a catheter, I had an interesting experience today.
Wearing one of these things requires you to empty it regularly, as you’d expect, so you get used to the colour of what’s being emptied. It’s usually pretty similar to what you’d excrete if you weren’t using a catheter
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Today, Christmas Day, my wife and I were going to be on our own – all the kids having hived off to various in-laws. So we decided a few weeks ago that we’d go and help at the Church of Christ Christmas dinner. It’s put on by the church (and has been for 19 years) for people who don’t otherwise any special place to go on Christmas Day.
Though at first it seemed a bit chaotic when we arrived, it’s actually very well organised. You do have to work out for yourself which particular job you’re going to take up; there are people in charge, but they don’t tend to tell you do something specific. Most of the routines are written up on notices on the walls, and get ticked off as they’re done. So it was a matter of checking was what still to be done and then finding out where to do it
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Got an appointment the day after my Trial of Void (sounds like something judicial) and it isn’t till the 13th January. As of today, that’s 23 sleeps by my reckoning.
And of course, since it’s only a visit to the Urologist, it’s unlikely anything will be happening with the catheter. So unless someone else gets in on the act, and decides another try at voiding is on the cards, it looks like I’ve got the bloomin’ thing for the duration.
At the moment, I’m looking no further than the 13th Jan appointment. At least on that date I should have some idea where things are headed. My suspicion, based on discussions with the guys at the Day Surgery last Thursday, is that I’ll be up for a scrape out of the inner part of the prostate, a process that means that prostate no longer keeps squashing the urethra. It’s also less hectic a job than removing the thing entirely, certainly in terms of side-effects. So I’m told
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Back to Day Surgery today for the wonderfully named exercise: Trial of Void. This, in layman’s terms means: being able to empty your bladder after you’ve had a catheter taken out.
I was as nervous about this as I’ve ever been about anything, because if I didn’t manage the ‘trial’ I’d have had the catheter out for nothing, and have to have another one put back in.
Part of the joy of Trial of Void is that you have to drink lots while sitting around in the ward doing nothing. I did do the Sudoku in the newspaper, (no great achievement since it was only level 1) and tried to read Ian Rankin’s Strip Jack
, but neither of these held my attention as much as the voiding
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As if I wasn't having enough fun with plumbing at the moment, via my catheter, last night we had fun of a different kind of leakage.
I was just about to go to bed, about 10.30, and became aware of a dripping noise. Ominous. It was a noise I've heard before, and last time I heard it, it was coming from inside the hot water cupboard. And last time the dripping wetted my son's boxes of stories and cartoons that he'd carefully stored in the cupboard to keep them safe. He and his friends spent days drying each page in front of a heater. (He doesn't throw anything away!)
Yup, the dripping was going on inside the hot water cupboard again, and it wasn't just one drip, but several. It looked as though it had been going on for some time, although I hadn't heard anything during the course of the evening. Nothing for it but to get the plumber in - at after hours rates. He arrived about half an hour later and was a cheery bloke, careful to take his boots off at the door, and cautious about doing any damage while carrying the ladder around. He knew what he was up to, and gave us the worse case scenario in case that's what he'd have to wind up doing. That is, digging through the wall upstairs and getting at the pipes behind
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I can’t wait to get rid of this catheter. The only advantage of it is that I can legitimately use the disability toilet at work- it’s closer than the gents and there’s a lot more room!
I think the most inhibiting thing is not being able to walk quickly. I’m a person who’s always walked at a decent speed, which means I also get a bit of decent exercise in the process. Over the last week I’ve been walking round like an old man who’s forgotten where his muscles are
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I've been talking about areas of the body that I don't normally mention quite a bit of late, so it's probably appropriate to write the following here:
Every so often I’ve had to use suppositories for the rear end to alleviate haemorrhoids and the like. I won’t say any more about that, except that in the past the product used for this has been something called Preparation H, which has been around for years.
I went to the Pharmacy the other day to buy some and was told it’s no longer available. No explanation; it’s just gone. So the alternative was a product with the appalling name: Anusol
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In the last episode of the prostate saga I wrote that someone from the Urology Dept had claimed it would be six weeks before I'd get rid of the catheter. On Friday morning, I decided to have another go at seeing whether we could get a bit further with the removal of the thing, on the basis that being strung between four different departments (Urology, Emergency, Day Surgery and my own doctor) I might as well see whether someone else in the group had different info.
So I rang the Urology Secretary again. By this time she'd received the notes from Emergency - which was a plus - and I asked if there was any sign of an follow-up appointment to my biopsy. There still wasn't, but she said she'd called the HOD and ask him about the situation. (Unlike the woman on the previous day, who I think was only a clerical worker with a smattering of not-necessarily useful knowledge.)
She rang back within a few minutes, which was great, to tell me that I now have an appointment on Thursday, at 8.30 am. Exactly two weeks from the day of the biopsy
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As you might have expected it would.
By yesterday afternoon, instead of all the urine draining out the catheter, some of it insisted on coming out normally. The problem was that it would happen quite suddenly, as though I’d left going to the loo for too long and the matter became urgent.
Wetting pants and floors ain’t fun. It might be par for the course when you’re ninety, but I’m a bit younger than that
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After the biopsy last Thursday, things came right pretty quickly. Friday was good: I felt like a box of birds. Sat and Sun were okay, though things weren’t completely up to the mark body-wise, but were still able to be coped with. Nothing serious.
On Sunday morning I’d got up out of bed and done 20 minutes on the treadmill at home, and felt fine. On Monday morning I did the same, had breakfast and then suddenly had
How I felt after being on the treadmill
absolutely no energy whatsoever. Furthermore my body, particularly my legs, felt as though I’d just run a marathon, rather than walked a couple of ks on the treadmill. Treadmills don’t usually cause me that much pain!
Dragged myself off to work, but only lasted till lunchtime, when I was so weary that I could hardly keep awake. Came home and went straight to bed and fell into a deep sleep. Went to the doctor the next morning and she thought I might have a urinary tract infection, something that’s not uncommon after a prostate biopsy. (I’d had antibiotics for this but the course had finished.) She put me on another course of antibiotics and sent me home to bed. Ached and slept. And then about two found I was having trouble peeing again. By three I was wanting to go regularly – like every few minutes – but finding it harder and harder. Shades of the post-biopsy problem
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My prostate biopsy appointment was for 12.30 pm today. Being one of those people who can’t help being early, I was there in plenty of time, and was out of my clothes and into the hospital open-backed gown (and a dressing gown, thank goodness) by the time 12.30 arrived. I should have been ‘done’ and finished by 1 pm, but something went wrong. I think the head of the department, whom I was supposed to see, got caught up on an operation, and so all his afternoon patients got held up as well: several of us sitting in our open-backed thingees and dressing gowns (and cuddly slippers) waiting, and waiting.
Someone in a hospital gown; photo by Steve Garfield
He and another urologist finally arrived about 1.45 or maybe later, after we’d all watched a dozen nurse, doctors, office workers and sundry other people walk back and forth carrying bits of paper and ticking things off on them, or making themselves cuppas or drinking water out of the water fountain. None of them actually told us what was happening. (Once they were functioning with the doctors later on, they were very good, but a bit of communication wouldn’t have gone amiss
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When we were in Spain last year, we had two different paellas. The first was in Barcelona, on the famous street called La Rambla, in a crowded restaurant (we were stuck up against the wall by the back stairs) where the air was heavy with the smell of burning paella and vino.
La Rambla - photo by Rainer Ebert (flickr.com)
Did you notice that word ‘burning’? Even though this was restaurant was regarded as one of the top ones in Barcelona (so someone informed us), the paellas we received seemed to be more than a little overcooked.
The second place, in Valencia, was hardly more than a café. But what a difference. There the paella we partook of (ate, that is) was dished out of an enormous paella pan and dumped onto the plates. It was delicious, and reaffirmed our understanding that the paella really is one of Spain’s great dishes
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