The Disappointing Catheter

This morning my nurse inserted my catheter. Again, this is what you think of when you hear "catheter." Not like my previously mentioned PICC line, but a "regular" catheter. Right in the urethra.

I'm not gonna lie--I was looking forward to this. Ever since I saw an advertisement for an everyday, portable catheter, I've wanted one. David Sedaris also yearned for one, and was disappointed when he got it finally. It worked, but he soon realized that he smelled like urine when he had book signings and wore it. I don't have that problem, because this is a "catheter" catheter. It goes right in the ol' pee-hole, and empties into a large, thick, plastic bag on my IV tree, which now qualifies as a beast of burden.

In his short essay in When You Are Engulfed In Flames, Sedaris writes about his own portable one that is attached with tenacious glue that effectively shellacked the catheter onto the head of his penis. I don't have that. What I have is your typical catheter, with the rubber tube emanating from my urethra. My pee then ends up in a thick plastic bag that joins other tubes from my IV line on the tree. If my IV tree were a garden, I'd fire the gardener because he clearly had not been trimming the hedges and now they're overgrown and out of control.

Believe me--I'm the first person who should have a catheter, because I pee like an OCD child turns on, then off, then on, and then off, lights. This, though, is sort of a pain in the ass, and makes me consider ripping it out like Tom Cruise's Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July. I won't, though, because a) I'm too lazy and b) unlike Cruise's character, I'm not paralyzed and that would hurt like hell. Maybe I'll get used to it, too, like Ron Kovic (Cruise's character), or Lieutenant Dan, eventually does.

The procedure itself is a prospective nightmare, in the same way that a mention of a vasectomy makes any man cringe. Conveniently, though, my nurse gave me a local anesthetic to minimize the pain--you can guess where, since it's "local." That hardly registered, because I kept staring at the mustard-colored tube that I knew was going in shortly thereafter. Really, though, it's not that bad. When she was shoving the tube into my penis, I just looked up and waited to hear, "Done." I didn't even need something to bite down on, but that is not to say I wouldn't have chomped down on a wooden spoon...

The tube then connects to a thick-ish (I think--I haven't touched it yet) clear plastic bag that looks like a translucent whoopie cushion. So now that has joined my menagerie of other IV bags already on the tree. One of these little trinkets is a novelty sized bag of saline, which of course makes me pee even more.

I don't really know what's going on down there, though. Every hour or so my nurse comes in and empties the bag, and each time I'm surprised by the amount of urine that had amassed in it. Also, I constantly feel like I have to go, so it's unsettling to see that I already went. Or am going. Any conjugatiion or tense fits. I pee, I am peeing, I peed, I will pee, and so on.

Sometimes it feels like I have to go, and then I look down and see a prodigious amount of urine in the bag. This is how I imagine women feel when they have sex, especially if they're under 30. For men, it's incomprehensible for a woman not to orgasm and be fine with it. In the same way, I see that I peed, but I have none of the resolution that comes with being done. Again, I'm a man, so my analogy might be frustratingly incongruous.

Plus, I'm not sure how this thing stays in place. Another woman, an orderly I think, gave me an elastic bandage that holds its cords in place. I still move deliberately, though. It's not like I'm going to do somersaults or anything, but I might be overly careful with my constrained movements. I move slowly as it is, slower with the IV tree, but now I'm like a three-toed sloth. At least when I use the plastic urinal, I know what's going on. With this, it's like a retarded ghost keeps filling my bag with urine as a prank, and he thinks it's high-larious.

With this enormous pillow-sized saline bag, though, I would probably pee constantly. I'd fill the urinal, and then look for other receptacles to pee into. I have never empathized more with Howard Hughes, and his train of milk bottles that he filled with urine.

R