You know what really grinds my gears?!

[BlaqueKatt]

I am scared now of needing a Foley catheter....if and when I have kids....

no they are fantastic-I was on bedrest for my second to last month of pregnancy-when you're stuck needing to pee like every 5 seconds-getting up every hour at night, etc. I had a foley for about a week-I loved it-first time in months I didn't have to wake up at least 6 times to run to the bathroom...I was very sad when they removed it....had to waddle to the bathroom every 30 minutes or so-I drank tons of water....

[JustaCashier]

WARNING!

More Graphic Stuff Ahead!

================




Ah yes the Foley! (Although I don't recall knowing about the little balloon thingy, and I thought I'd done some research on Foleys once I got back home.)

Anyway, my Foley story is from nearly two years ago when I went into the hospital with what ended up being pneumonia. The damn thing pinched or something, and not only did it feel like I had to strain or push to pee, it caused a most unpleasant soreness in the insertion area.

The realization of all of this came maybe around four days after I'd been admitted. I'd had been on a ventilator which would stay in for about a week, one day before being transferred out of CCU. So, I'm trying to communicate in writing to one of the nurses my situation. (This was all new to me, since I'd never had a cath before, at least since I was maybe around five and in the hospital, which I have no memory of. So, didn't know if a little discomfort was normal, and/or if the restrictive flow feeling was normal).

Anyway, when tried to tell the nurse about this, I suggested the tube might be clogged. (Thinking some kind of crystallization in the line). He glances at it and says it looks fine, and when I need to go, just go.

The day after the vent came out, and I was transferred out of CCU to Oncology (yeah, they found out I also had a [highly treatable] form of leukemia) either the nurse(s) that did the transfer (same bed I had been in all along) noticed the line being pinched, or it worked it's way out, because I could now pee without even realizing it. (I actually had to ask if the Foley was getting any fuller.

So, that function is now fine, although the discomfort would haunt me for weeks after, even after the Foley was removed around three weeks in to my seven week stay. (I had a rather unpleasant incident of trying to sit down on the commode, and pinching "it"). The only other issue I had with the Foley itself, was probably a day or two of being in Oncology, and the line slightly pinched again. I mentioned it to one of the nurses, and she said "Oh, the line is pinched!"

So that's when I knew it wasn't my imagination that there was something wrong with the Foley, and it had indeed been pinched before, to a much greater extent. And you bet I was good, in a non-SC way, about letting the nurses and PT's know of my "discomfort" situation whenever they moved me, or early on in my stay when they had to bathe me!

Fortunately, that was actually the most painful part of my stay. I had a continual seven day chemo drip, and was lucky enough not to have any pain or nausea form that (they gave me an anti-nausea at the time of hanging each new chemo bag.)

So, Plaid, with my pinched line experience, I think I almost feel your pain. I didn't rip the Foley out, but while doped up on Morphine my first night in, I ripped the ventilator out.

I remember having a bizarre dream/hallucination that I was rolling over and crushing small children. (I'm on the large side, and was much moreso then, but in the dream my size was hugely, so to speak, exaggerated.) That panic might be what caused me to rip out the vent, and I vaguely remember a couple of male nurses trying to restrain me while I'm frantically trying to tell them about the kids, and that they needed to be rescused. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I realized the part of panicking and the nurses trying to calm me down and restrain me actually happened. Although it seemed real, I thought it was part of the dream.

The next thing I remember, is coming out of the fog around four days later, with the vent shoved down my throat, (only very vaguely aware of it that first night) and my wrists restrained with the ties from a hospital gown. That's when they explained what happened my first night.

Mike

[Jester]

You know what really grinds my gears?!

A Yugo with a shot clutch?

[Mikkel]

I hope you didn't pull out your Foley. One of my medic school instructors told us about how some strung out idiot pulled his out in the ER. The balloon was still inflated. There was a lot of blood and screaming.

Oh yes, it happens. I talked to a guy, at the hospital, who had done the same thing. He was home for the weekend, high on painkillers, and decided that he wanted to pee properly. He said that it did hurt a bit, even through all those wonderful painkillers, but at that time he had pulled it halfway out and decided to pull it the rest of the way .
He didn't stay at home, his wife called an ambulance and back he went.