Skip to main content

My first catheter

Catheter. The word should lead to a shudder of dread. Be grateful if you have not needed one! Thanks to being infertile and doing ivf I got the opportunity to 'lose my catheter virginity'.

It's been a while since my last post so here's a little update. I've been seeing a new doctor, new clinic, new lab, new medication regime. The clinic is interesting, they seem to pride themselves on an approach that some might say is casual, others might say is.... Rather unprofessional. It comes from the top down, the director (my Dr) is a bit of a larrican who seems to never be serious and opts for terminology like 'shagging' and 'vag' .

Well I went in to do my egg pick up and this time opted to do it in the chair under local anaesthesia rather than getting general. It really wasn't so bad. Took hardly any time. The only slightly disturbing thing was the nurses were chatting away about drinking a cheap coconut liquor called 'wipe out' . I was momentarily transported to my silly drunken times in more youthful days. Or maybe that was the drugs.

Anyway the procedure was in the morning, I was sent home to chill out, tragically watching gossip girl... quite content... and I realised around 3pm that I had not peed since the procedure. So I went off to the loo and despite needing to go, I couldn't get anything out. Couldn't get on to nurses at the clinic, called a health line, and they encouraged to get to hospital if i wasn't peeing in an hour or two. My partner took me up to hospital about 5pm. Fortunately I had the foresight to take a tablet with me to continue watching good old gossip girl.. . Haha. Well yes... because there was a lot of waiting and I wasn't seen until around 9... and the catheter didn't get put in until 1030. I can tell you the whole experience was mighty uncomfortable.

I find out later that it's a thing that can happen. The local anaesthetic can mess with nerves in the bladder for a day or so.
So I guess I had mixed feelings about the catheter. I at least experienced a level of relief. But the feeling of it being there is not nice.

The woeful thing was I got sent home around midnight wearing the bloody thing and had to work out a plan the next day to get it removed. Fortunately I have a great GP who saw me the next day. And I have been peeing again, hooray! Although, it hurts and I feel a UTI is imminent.

I also experienced another issue with voiding along with this... but I will save you the details of my prune juice adventures.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the stories that are out there

It seems to me that the happy-ending story that is so often "out there" about infertility is this: "Here is a couple who struggled and struggled to have kids, and then, finally, they had a baby. The end"... I think something about this story feels like a lack of honouring of the losses felt along the way for infertile couples. I know life goes on, and I know it does no one any good at all to get stuck in grief or pain. But surely there is some kind of transition for people to adjust from infertility to parenthood? Maybe there is a certain loss that is always felt? Transitioning to parenthood seems like it would be a hard process following infertility battles, and different somehow from a "normal fertility" transition to parenthood which I am sure would be hard enough (and I think is spoken about a lot). Something about the "...and then they had a baby" part of the story seems a bit dismissive about the infertility dramas, or gives a message of-...
17 comments
Read more

belonging or be longing somewhere

I heard a great radio segment the other day on the importance of belonging.  Belonging is a pretty core and pretty basic human need I would say, and we certainly don't feel great, in fact we probably do things like turn to drugs and alcohol or other addictions or avoidant behaviours, when we don't have a strong sense of belonging somewhere in the world. These notions of belonging got me thinking about the infertility/trying to conceive journey. I guess getting online and reading and writing a blog has been all about gaining a better sense of belonging in this process. But even in this lovely online world there is a sad kind of aspect to it that... some people move on to the world of having kids and it doesn't feel like I "Belong" with them in the same sense. Some move on to have no kids, but as I am still trying to have kids, in a sense, don't "belong" there either. I can perhaps feel that I belong wholeheartedly with other people in my position, bu...
13 comments
Read more

a few thoughts on where am I at

I'm getting over it. We have recently had the results of our 7th IVF round... which are... negative. sigh. I'm not surprised of course. It's starting to feel a bit ridiculous. Plan is to meet with a third doctor, who we have been waiting to see for months, to see what light he would shed. The thing I'm frustrated about is that IVF... it's not treating the problem at all, as far as I can see. I'm not a doctor but it seems to me that there's something up with the fact that our embryos are not hardy. IVF is just trying to maximise numbers, not helping to fix whatever is causing the problem with the embryos. But the thing is that the medical professionals don't actually know what the problem is for us... so IVF is all they've got to offer. I'm feeling a bit silly to continue with it, because who knows how long it could go on for, and who knows if for us, with whatever our problem is, whether it even could work. Well a few questions for the new do...
6 comments
Read more