You Want To Put WHAT, UP WHERE?

 

(Laughing at myself as I think about my 

first cystoscopy experience)

I’ll never forget the day my urologist called me and said I needed to come in for a “scope”. I had no idea what that meant, but I would soon find out!

Let me backup a little bit here before I go on. You see, about three months before my crash course into the exciting world of cystoscopies, I had a serious trip and fall accident that left me with a crushed bladder that required a life saving  operation to repair the damage, and as a consolation prize, I received a life sentence of having to rely on a catheter to drain my bladder. 

For those not familiar with the joys of having to rely on a catheter which was developed back in the dark ages of medicine, when a witch’s brew was made from eye of newt and wing of bat, and was thought of as state of the art medicine, please allow me to enlighten you.  

Initially I was fitted with what is known as an indwelling catheter that I wore 24 hours a day. It came with a collection bag to hold my urine which I would open a little valve on the bottom to empty the contents when it became full. The bag was strapped to my lower leg and as you might imagine it got heavier and heavier as it filled up throughout the day. To further understand, try emptying 2 cans of beer into a ziplock bag and strapping it to your lower leg. Now walk around and listen to the slosh, slosh, slosh sound like you’re dragging around an old washing machine on the heavy clean setting. Not a lot of fun I tell you, especially when all the neighborhood doggies think your leg is the neighborhood message board where they can come to check on their pee-mail!

Oh I should also mention that there’s a plastic hose that carries the urine from the bladder down to the bag and can you guess how it gets from my bladder to the bag? That’s right, up my wee willie!

Okay so now you understand the basics of the male version of indoor plumbing.

So, back to my call with my urologist, “Mr. Smith I need you to come in for a scope of your bladder to see how you’re healing after the operation”.

Now up to that point, I assumed that a scope meant something like a scan, or X-ray. That was until I made the mistake of asking him how exactly he was going to see inside my bladder. His matter of factly reply was “Oh we’re just going to insert a camera into your bladder to take a look around”.

Yikes! You’re “just” going to put what, up where?

I have the imagination of a 5 year old and I was envisioning him trying to jamb a Sony Handycam up into a space that wasn’t designed for a battery operated camcorder, let alone a battery!

My fears were somewhat set aside when I checked out what Doctor Google had to say about the matter. It turns out that yes, they would look inside my bladder and associated plumbing all the way up, with a tiny camera lens at the end of a cable and not the whole camera! 

Looking at the pictures of the urology spy camera on my computer screen, it looked like it came equipped with about five feet of video cable, and with only my underdeveloped infantile brain to figure this out, I’m thinking they were going to shove the entire length of cable up my, well you know! However, after a call to my doctor, he assured me that they were only going to use a small portion of the cable to reach the scene of the crime to record my Youtube video. I swear I could see his eyes rolling right over the phone.

As my male insecurities crept in, I wondered what kind of man did they think they would need so much cable to reach the goal line? Thinking about it, I realized some guys (yes, like me) are more susceptible to the effects of shrinkage due to cold temperatures than others, so a shorter cable would be fine for me.

Finally the day of reckoning came. As I entered the examination room I was greeted by an older matronly looking nurse whom I assumed was of the age that she had seen everything there ever was to see countless times over the years, and would have no opinion about what I was exposing to the room.

There was a hook on the wall with a sign that read, “Store your dignity and pride here during the procedure”. 

Did I mention the room was cold?  I was instructed to lower my jeans and tighty-whities to my ankles and lay on the table and wait for the doctor to arrive. I was given a small towel about the size of a square of toilet paper to cover myself up with as I tried to calm myself by staring upwards and counting the tiny holes in each ceiling tile as I waited for my urologist to arrive. For future reference, there are 96 holes in each tile.

When the doctor arrived, I was surprised that he was not alone. As he entered the room like a man about to do battle with the lions in the Colosseum of ancient Rome, he was accompanied by three very attractive young ladies who looked about the age of high school seniors. As a reference, at my age, anyone less than fifty looks like a high school senior. 

Oh this is great! He’s brought a cheerleading squad with him. Just what I need, more eyes in the general direction of my nether region. Now I’m sure the room is getting colder!  

Well I could tell you, the whole experience was awful, but I’d be lying. I had worked myself up into a bit of a frenzy for nothing. 

It was over very quickly, taking maybe 10 or 15 minutes and was painless, plus I got to watch the TV monitor showing the entire trip up my personal piping that looked a lot like what the inside of a big city sewer system looks like from start to finish.  

So, don’t be like this stupid ol’ bugger and just relax, it’ll be over before you know it and think of all the stories you can tell your pals. Just don’t mention anything about shrinkage:-)

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Every word of this story is 100% true (except that parts I just made up)

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For more of my Medical Memories, see my blog at

medical-memoir.blogspot.com

 

 

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

 

(Image Courtesy of FreePik.com)

Considering all the bad news lately, especially for seniors worried about our retirement funds, etc., I’d like to share a true feel good story with you that happened to my wife and I the other day.

To put this into perspective, I have to begin with some not so good news first, so please bear with me before bailing.

About a month ago my wife was grocery shopping and a woman lifted her wallet out of her purse while she was being distracted. The wallet contained credit cards, bank debit cards about $200 in cash and other assorted bits and pieces of information. Fortunately her driver license and health card were not in the wallet.

Once she went to pay for her groceries at the cash register she noticed the wallet was gone and panic stations set in.

A police report was filed and we then spent three days sorting out the credit and debit cards with the various banks.

I must admit, we live in a very safe small town and we have been fortunate to never have experienced being the victims of crime, so this was a real wake-up for us and an extremely stressful event for my wife as you may imagine. At least she wasn’t held up and robbed, or injured

The police were aware of a gang of individuals in a neighbouring city just 10 minutes away from us who had been stealing from other unsuspecting folks. The police had been aware of this group and told us that there was little if any hope of finding my wife’s wallet. So that was that it, “Gone with the Wind….”

Yesterday we received a call from a number we didn’t recognize and because we are constantly getting calls from scammers, con artists and duct cleaners we don’t answer the phone if we don’t recognize who is calling. If it's important, they can leave a message. They did not. Ten minutes later the same number called and once again left no message.

About an hour later, the same phone number called a third time and I picked it up as I was prepared to tell whoever was kept calling to bugger off, but instead a rather young voice explained that he had found a wallet with my wife’s name and number in it and asked if I would I like to come and pick it up at his house?

Naively I asked if there was anything in the wallet and he said there were some cards in it, but alas, and no big surprise, sans cash.

I imagined the lad on the phone was quite young, probably a teenager, so I said okay, wrote down his address and said I’d be there in about 15 minutes. I did a quick Google Street view search to make sure I wasn’t going to be driving into a Beirut war zone.

Now I acknowledge that at 70 years of age and certainly in no condition to defend myself if need be, this may not have been my best thought process, but I’m still a young 30 year old tough guy within my aging brain. Well, except when I'm in the doctor’s examination room as he is probing me in places that I don’t feel the need to describe right here. It seems that being inspected, detected and injected is my full time occupation these days.

So I screwed up my courage and headed out the door to face whatever mighty transpire during said interaction, but not before my equally aged wife insisted on coming with me as my personal bodyguard should physical reinforcements be required.

Now before I get to that, part of my trepidation was based on the fact that although we live in what is usually a crime free area as I mentioned, we have a high end hotel a few minutes away and lately multiple patrons have checked out of the hotel the next morning to find their car windows smashed and whatever contents left inside the car the previous night, gone.

The police have managed to capture some, but not all of the ne'er-do-wells and they were all in the range of 15 years old and they were all from the very part of the neighbouring city I mentioned located 10 minutes away from my house.

So off we trot to face whatever life will give us during this adventure which could be a simple handover, or a possible hostage negotiation of my wife’s wallet.

I pull up in front of the caller’s home and as I exit it, I leave the motor running just in case she has to make a dash for safety, leaving me to deal with whatever lurks behind the front door. I lean over and give her what I think may be the last kiss we ever share and make my way up the front steps. As I reach to pull open the screen door, a lad about the age of 14 or 15 opens the door and simply hands me the wallet. He looks out the door and points to a couple of pine trees across the street and tells me that’s where the wallet was found.

Relieved that there were no “yoots” in ski masks jumping out from their hiding spots armed with a rolls of duct tape to take me prisoner and hold me for ransom, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a twenty dollar bill as a reward. Just then the young lad said it was actually his little brother who found the wallet. So I suggested that maybe he could share the twenty with his brother, at which time a little guy, about the size of a garden gnome, popped his head from around a corner and proceeded to relieve his older brother of the reward money without saying a word to him or I.

As we drove home, both my wife and I felt a wave of gratitude that even though the world can seem like a scary and dangerous place at times, there were still some young people around this world that are good people and feeling a little hope for the future.

Will I hesitate to dive into an unknown situation like this again at the drop of the hat with such little concern? Hell no, I may be old but I won’t be that stupid (again:-)!