An ode to catheters

When I told you I was going to ease back into writing this blog, I guess I really meant it. I hoped to write a post a week, and I'm already behind on that. For that, I blame the baby. We've both been fighting a cold and let me tell you how much fun it is dealing with a baby who is sick while you are also sick. It's awesome.

Anyway, after the world's whiniest morning, she is finally taking a proper nap so I'm going to attempt to shit out a blog post in record time. She's due to wake up and eat at any moment now so if this just cuts out in mid-sentence, it's because I had to feed the baby and I thought you'd prefer a half-finished piece of crap post over nothing. I'm probably wrong about that, but it's what I figured.

Okay, so in today's post, I will attempt to sing the praises of a little medical trick called a catheter. Because catheters are amazing, and if I could, I would just have one in pretty much all the time.

If you're not familiar with the concept, a catheter is this little tube they put up your pee-hole into your bladder, and then they inflate a little balloon thing or whatever to hold it in place, and it makes your pee drain out all the time into a bag so you never have to go to the bathroom. 

Due to the traumatic nature of baby Audrey's birth, I was granted a catheter for over 24 hours after she was born, and in some ways these were the best 24 hours of my life. This was partly because of the joy of birthing my first child, but at least 80% because of the joy of having a catheter.

Here are the main reasons why having a catheter is DA BOMB:

1

YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET UP AND WALK TO THE BATHROOM EVER

I can't overstate how fantastic this is. Anyone who has suffered a physical injury that makes walking difficult can attest that going to the bathroom is one of the worst parts of the experience. If you have a sprained ankle, you don't want to have to keep walking to the bathroom every hour or two. So you try to drink as little as possible to avoid having to pee. And when you feel the beginnings of an urge to urinate, you get stressed out. You know you're going to have to get up eventually, and it's going to be awful. How long can you last before you need to give in and make the trip? How much pee can your bladder hold? How much bladder pain are you willing to endure in order to avoid the ankle pain of walking to the potty?

A catheter relieves you of these concerns. You can drink as much as you want -- all the 32-ounce Gatorades your busted-ass body can handle! You can get hammered on beer if you want, and you don't have to worry about breaking the seal. The pee just continually pours out of you, and it's great.

2

YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET UP FOR ANY REASON AT ALL, ACTUALLY

Catheters are a teensy bit annoying, I must admit. Because leading out of your underpants is this tube that's taped to your leg, and it is like 6 feet long and leads down to the collection bag where all your pee piles up. If you wanted to get up, you would have to carefully move the tube everywhere your leg goes, making sure not to trip on it because that could make it detach and pour pee everywhere. And then you have to carry your collection bag with you anywhere you decide to go.

Who can be fussed to deal with all that??! Certainly not me. And in fact, the nurses in the hospital EXPECT you to be lazy as shit, using the catheter as an excuse.

After giving birth, the baby was kept in a high bassinet next to my hospital bed. If she started to cry and needed to be fed or held or whatever, guess what I did? Did I carefully maneuver my pee-tubes to get up and grab her? Ummm, no, dumbass. Of course I didn't. I just pressed the nurse call button on my hospital bed and made them hand me the baby. And when the baby was asleep, I would press the call button again and make them put her back in the bassinet. It was sweet. If they had any objection to it, I could just say something like "I'm not too sure on my feet just yet and didn't want to trip on the catheter tube." And then they'd realize that me tripping on the catheter tube would make WAY more work for them (pee everywhere; me with a busted face ... so much liability) than just handing me a baby every few hours.

I have never in my life had such a free pass to be unceasingly lazy.

3

SOMEONE ELSE HAS TO DEAL WITH YOUR PEE AND THAT'S FUNNY

Guess who got to empty that collection bag? Was it me? F*** no it wasn't.

Oh, and here's a bit of neat trivia: a significant part of the weight women gain during pregnancy is additional fluids in their body to support the baby. In the first days after birth, all that fluid gets flushed out of the body. In the form of urine.

Yeah, I was filling that collection bag every few hours like it was my job. It was such an impressive volume of urine that the nurses -- who work at a hospital and empty catheter collection bags on a regular basis -- had to comment on it. 

Imagine how many trips to the bathroom that would have been. 

That would have sucked.

4

IT DIDN'T HURT TO GET THE CATHETER PUT IN, AND IT DIDN'T HURT TO GET IT PULLED OUT

Sometimes, people resist having a catheter put in because they think it hurts. These people are idiots. It didn't hurt a bit, and did I mention that I didn't have to get out of bed for any reason for over 24 hours.


So, in conclusion, catheters are the greatest invention of all time and if you're ever in the hospital and the idea gets floated that maybe you should get one, DO IT. DON'T BE A FOOL.

STAY IN BED AND MAKE STRANGERS HANDLE YOUR PEE.

DRINK LOTS OF GATORADE.

MAKE THEM HAND YOU YOUR BABY AND GET YOUR HAIRBRUSH FOR YOU AND DIG YOUR PHONE CHARGER OUT OF YOUR BACKPACK NO NOT THAT POCKET THE SECOND ONE FROM THE FRONT YEAH THAT ONE IT'S JUST IN THERE UNDER THE TOWEL DO YOU SEE IT?

IT'S AWESOME.


I was going to draw more pictures, but I don't really know what to draw and this mouse sucks and the baby is starting to wake up so that's all I got for today. Like I said, EASING BACK IN DAMMIT.

Give me a break. I have to go to the potty on my own now. It is very taxing.