9. Supra pubic catheter

I had a supra pubic catheter put in recently. It's a minor operation that involves them drilling a hole into the base of  your bladder and inserting a tube for drainage. It sounds awful, but it's not an issue, because they do it under a general anaesthetic. 

It's just like having an in dwelling catheter, but it completely bypasses the urinary tract and more importantly it means I can get an erection and have sex again.

Well it's been ten days since I had the operation and in that amount of time, there have been some positives and some negatives. 

Let's get the negatives out of the way. What a fucking nightmare it's been! I had the operation in the first place, because I was getting so many infections in my urinary tract and guess what I come out of hospital with? Yep, a urinary tract infection. I had a few days after the op where I was constantly wetting myself. No urine was making its way into my newly acquired catheter, because the instant any fluid touched my bladder, it passed out the natural route. 

Something is wrong with the catheter, I told myself. Is it blocked, I wondered? This carried on for a few days and on one of the district nurses twice daily visits, I was strongly  advised to go back into hospital and have it looked at. 

So, back I go, onto the ward again for them to investigate as to why my catheter wasn't working and why I was constantly wetting myself. 

To cut a long story short, they discovered that I had a urinary tract infection, started me on a course of antibiotics, with the belief that that I would now start draining fluid through the catheter instead of my pants. 

They kept me in over night and in the morning, the fluid that had left my body had left my body, the way the surgeon had intended as opposed to how nature had intended. 

We're coming to the positives bit, right? Well, no, not quite. They told me I could go home that lunchtime. The good news is that I'd already had my chicken, sweet corn and mayo sandwich already - and very nice it was too - but the not so good news was that they told me that I couldn't take home and finish the course of antibiotics that they'd started me on because they were concerned that I was building up an immunity to them, because I'd had a few courses of them recently. 

Since I was discharged, I have drank gallons of water and I feel like the infection has flushed out. 

Now we're at the positives part. 

My catheter is now working perfectly and I'm no longer wearing nappies. The nurses call them 'inco pads', but they're basically nappies for adults. Three days clean. Hurrah to me and hopefully, it'll be plain sailing from now on. 

What a nightmare though. 

Regards 

Dan.