Well, I hate making these threads of misery but WTF. This is my life. You are my friends. I need to tell someone.
During a surgery a year ago, a nurse damaged my urethra with a catheter causing scarring and blockage. It has to be fixed or it’s life threatening when it shuts off completely causing kidney failure.
August 1st, a surgeon will cut under my balls and go in to cut a section of urethra out, sew it back together and place a Foley catheter in - for 30 ****ING DAYS. Then once it’s healed around the cath, they yank it out.
If you don’t know what a Foley is, it’s a tube up your dick attached to a bag. It is the most brutal thing you can imagine. If that’s not bad enough, apparently they need to get your balls out of the way so they have some contraption that busts a lot of blood vessels so basically if feels like you’ve been kicked in the nuts for six months to a year. I imagine they pull them up to your chin.
I’m terrified. I’m going to stress for the next month and a half. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to get through it. I had the tube for nine days and it was like a hot poker - a 9-10 on the pain scale 100% of the time.
When they yank it out (it goes all the way into your bladder where a balloon keeps it in. They deflate the balloon and literally yank it out.) it takes your breath away. I just sat there holding my junk with a towel for a good ten minutes before I could move. I’ve had that twice now.
This will be three times as long and much worse with the incision. I have to stop chemo for a while which means, after I get through this, I’ll have to fight my Crohns Disease back into remission. Last time that took almost a year.
The chemo slows healing so I’ll miss at least two treatments. I also can’t take opiates or NSAIDS. That leaves Tylenol amd Tramodol. Weak ass shit.
The up side? I won’t get to die from kidney failure and I’ll be able to piss like a 17 year old. I’ll probably drop about 30-40 pounds to. (I’d weigh 145-155...not good.)
The downside is pain and the remote possibility that my Crohns will flare out of control and I will get sepsis. I’ll be very weak from an immune system standpoint so this is very dangerous.
I’m going to psych myself up somehow. I’m scared of the hospital now too with PTSD from my experience over the last two years. (Three surgeries, two caths). I get anxiety attacks when I go to the urologist. Embarrassing. I take a bunch of Xanax now before I go.
What’s really pissing me off (see what I did there?) is that this has nothing to do with my disease. I’m still trying to find a lawyer. They won’t take my case because my situation is so complex. This is insane.
And I have shows in September. And the show must go on.
