March 21, 2005

A New Man.

This is the last discussion regarding my surgery and associated personal topics. You may wish to move on if you’re not interested in this at all. Any future discussions about my private areas will be of a sexual nature intended to entertain. Thank you very much.

Bright and early this morning, Earl and I did the dubious task of removing my catheter. If you’ve been following along, you know that it’s been in me since Friday, March 11 as I recovered from surgery. The sensation of the catheter being pulled out was rather disconcerting and created a bit of burning. But it was done faster than you could think about it. I think we pulled out around 10 or so inches of tubing.

Having depended (no pun intended) on the catheter for the week and a half, there was concern that I would have trouble controlling my bladder for a little while, so I took the morning off from work to make sure everything is working correctly. Since I didn’t sleep much last night, I took a little nap and was able to sleep naturally on my stomach for the first time and I slept better than I have in a long while. I had pleasant dreams. I feel well rested.

After awaking from my nap, I found that I had to go the bathroom. I was relieved (again, no pun intended) to find that there was no blood or urinary leakage while I was napping so everything appeared to be working well. I went to the bathroom, aimed and then fired, and was about thrown back on my ass.

You must understand that for the past 30 years or so, it’s taken me 60 to 90 seconds at a time to try to empty my bladder. While I didn’t ‘dribble’, I wasn’t really about to put out any fires either. It hurt me to urinate 95% of the time. I would go to the bathroom every hour or so (except in the overnight). And I never completely emptied my bladder.

What I just experienced I’ve never experienced before in my life. No pain. No waiting around for things to happen. No wondering if everything was going to work. It just worked like it was suppose to. And I have a gut feeling that it’s going to stay that way.

I truly feel like a new man.