PUBS
December 29th 2008 05:47
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 (!)
Anyway, at about 11 this morning, I did the usual thing and discovered a good deal of reddish colour in the urine. My first reaction was probably what most people’s would be: I’m bleeding somewhere inside!
Worse, just before lunch I emptied it out again only to find that the colour was now purple – not bright purple, but definitely purple. I went to lunch with a friend feeling more than a little distracted.
However, when I got back to work, the colour had reverted to normal, and there was no sign of anything discolouring it at all. Googled it. As one does.
‘Purple urine’ was sufficient to get an explanation. It’s called Purple Urine Bag Syndrome. Seems reasonable enough. According to the first site:
Purple urine bag syndrome (PUBS) is a rare syndrome associated with alkaline urine and some urinary tract infections, and is more frequently observed in chronically catheterized and constipated women. The urinary catheter drainage system changes colour from red or blue to violet or purple, sometimes with differently coloured tube and bag. The aetiology is still controversial but in the literature researched most authors believe that indigo, which is blue, and indirubin, which is red, are responsible for the colours obtained.
The chain reaction responsible for the PUBS begins with tryptophan from the food chain being metabolized by gut bacteria. This metabolic process produces indole, which is absorbed into portal circulation and converted into indoxyl sulphate in the liver, after a series of detoxification transformations. [Tryptophan is one of the 20 amino acids and is essential to the human diet.]
Okay, without understanding everything there, I got the drift. Apart from not being a chronically cathetized and constipated woman, PUBS had occurred. So some bacteria must have got itself mixed in somewhere.
Another site tells it more simply: The colour is seen when the pigments indirubin or indigo blue interact with the plastic of the catheter or urine bag.
So it wasn’t just me – the bag was partly to blame!
As it happened, I was talking to the District Nurse later in the afternoon, and mentioned it. Obviously PUBS isn’t rare, as she wasn’t in the least bit fazed by it. Sounded as though it happened to most of her cathetized patients at some point!
For a couple of hours around lunch time I was feeling pretty low. I’m good at thanking the Lord when things have come right, but not so good at trusting Him in the middle of things. (I'm more likely to be thinking of something like competitive term life insurance rates!) Maybe it’s something (else) He’s trying to teach me….
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 (!)
Anyway, at about 11 this morning, I did the usual thing and discovered a good deal of reddish colour in the urine. My first reaction was probably what most people’s would be: I’m bleeding somewhere inside!
Worse, just before lunch I emptied it out again only to find that the colour was now purple – not bright purple, but definitely purple. I went to lunch with a friend feeling more than a little distracted.
However, when I got back to work, the colour had reverted to normal, and there was no sign of anything discolouring it at all. Googled it. As one does.
‘Purple urine’ was sufficient to get an explanation. It’s called Purple Urine Bag Syndrome. Seems reasonable enough. According to the first site:
Purple urine bag syndrome (PUBS) is a rare syndrome associated with alkaline urine and some urinary tract infections, and is more frequently observed in chronically catheterized and constipated women. The urinary catheter drainage system changes colour from red or blue to violet or purple, sometimes with differently coloured tube and bag. The aetiology is still controversial but in the literature researched most authors believe that indigo, which is blue, and indirubin, which is red, are responsible for the colours obtained.
The chain reaction responsible for the PUBS begins with tryptophan from the food chain being metabolized by gut bacteria. This metabolic process produces indole, which is absorbed into portal circulation and converted into indoxyl sulphate in the liver, after a series of detoxification transformations. [Tryptophan is one of the 20 amino acids and is essential to the human diet.]
Okay, without understanding everything there, I got the drift. Apart from not being a chronically cathetized and constipated woman, PUBS had occurred. So some bacteria must have got itself mixed in somewhere.
Another site tells it more simply: The colour is seen when the pigments indirubin or indigo blue interact with the plastic of the catheter or urine bag.
So it wasn’t just me – the bag was partly to blame!
As it happened, I was talking to the District Nurse later in the afternoon, and mentioned it. Obviously PUBS isn’t rare, as she wasn’t in the least bit fazed by it. Sounded as though it happened to most of her cathetized patients at some point!
For a couple of hours around lunch time I was feeling pretty low. I’m good at thanking the Lord when things have come right, but not so good at trusting Him in the middle of things. (I'm more likely to be thinking of something like competitive term life insurance rates!) Maybe it’s something (else) He’s trying to teach me….
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