20220325: tap

We arrived at the destination. I could see my wife, my friend, my cousin and my nurse.

It was not home ground but familiar turf. Good to have familiar faces on the team batting with you.

Getting to the emergency department - its like going into the jungle.

Leeches instantly start sucking the blood, an insect pricking your fingers to see if you are sweet and tasty, the serpent on your arm, with its tight stranglehold, being ripped of your clothes, the pulling of the thorns - taking stock of your heart, etc

Then being spread on the flat stone - to see how photogenic your lungs are, etc

I am familiar with this adventure.

They removed the tshirt i was wearing and instead of the gown coming on, they closed the screens and made the bed flat. Then off came the shorts i was wearing.

I can't lie flat but I didn't care , it would take a few seconds anyway.

Instead of feeling the fresh garment on me, i could hear the rip to remove the diaper.

Now, I am in the flat position. I can't lift my head to see what they were doing.

Then I felt cold and wet all over my tap. Through my position of the head and sort of sideways tilt I could see the top a tall brown bottle.

In a hospital setting, that could only be betadene solution.

I just moved my hand at nobody in particular to suggest "what".

To which someone replied "urine".

That made sense. They were cleaning the tap.

When I was here 3 years back and for 5 months, changing it was a daily affair, somedays more due to physio.

But I don't remember them using betadene even once. Maybe they did when I was taken to the ICU I wouldn't know.

It's called a condom catheter. As the name suggests, the rubber covers the tap and a hole at the end allows to connect the hose so when you pee, it goes into the hose and gets into its bag. Convenient.

To my unprepared mind, next came pain, and more paid and lots of it. As usual, I couldn't scream or protest.

I don't know what they did, as the diaper was back on when I was elevated - not to mention, I was coughing throughput.

The last time I had felt so much pain in the tap was when a doctor had conducted a procedure for my kidney stone.

The next day in the ICU, when they came for sponge bath and removed the diaper, i could see.

The hose was connected directly to the tap.

If the kidneys trickle down something, it'll go directly to the bag through the hose.

I haven't felt like peeing since that pain. So I haven't peed. 

But 3 times a day, they empty the bag and its about ½ a litre each time. 

So we realise we are peeing only if it flows in the tap. So the hose must have been pushed beyond the tap to go directly to the tank.

Interesting....

I'll surely burn like anything when the hose is removed and urine flows back through the tap. Shudder to imagine that.

And what about incontinence? Surely the tap will have forgotten it's it's job to stop the flow...