Restarting the Plumbing

Today was a pretty stressful day.  Today we restarted the plumbing.

The morning stated at 6 am with the removal of my incision drains which just felt "weird." It felt like what I would imagine pulling out two fatty bait worms planted deeply along your spine.  It was weird; it made the hair on my body stand up on ends; and it gave me the willies.

The next item on the list was to get rid of the foley catheter, the one hanging from my penis, which drains the urine out of my bladder.  My doctor promised me a hot nurse to do the dirty work but instead sent a murse (male nurse).  I was told to take a deep breath as the dangling end of the catheter was yanked out.  Not as painful as it sounds but equally as weird of a feeling, though this time I spit the bait worm out of my penis (and across the room).

With the tubes removed I was gently told that I should start peeing again in the next 8 hours, and the rest of the day was spent hanging out with friends, playing dominos, and enjoying my new tubeless freedoms.

What I was not told was that if I don't evacuate within the next eight hours then I'll get a bladder scan to measure the urine in my stomach and I'd likely need to get another foley put in.  After six hours they rolled in the bladder scanner and filled me in on the details of the next two hours.

Holy crap.... Drink water!!!  That's all I could think about as I quickly downed 1.5 liters of water.

I have never had a problem peeing but this was a lot to handle. I had to pee, bed-side in a urinal so it could be measured, in the next two hours or else suffer the consequences.  The bladder scanner stared me down from across the room as the nurse aimed a fresh catheter at my penis.  On top of this my stomach was super bloated, growling at me about the next poo shot, and I now had almost two liters of liquids pressing through my body, surely enough to guarantee another foley.

Every time I felt like going was a false alarm and when it wasn't a false alarm I thought I'd crap my pants and had to self-abort.  Thirty minutes passed, then came an hour and with forty-five minutes to spare I decided it going to be an all or nothing affair; so I called in the troops, yes the poo-shot came to my rescue.  Loyal and trusting poo-shot.

We first changed venues, moving to the bathroom, which alone did the trick to fill up the urinal, but I still accepted the shot for bragging rights.  I've never met a community of people so concerned about my peeing and pooping.

Relaxed, drained and completely spent, I closed the door on a successful day.