I’d been a little worried over the past few days that things were not quiet right with the wound drain and catheter. Normally the drain would have virtually nothing in it, and the catheter would be pretty full. Instead it was the other way around. When I had woken each morning for the past few days the drain contained at least 500ml of fluid which looked remarkably like urine. During the day, when I was up and about the drain would contain less and less fluid at each empty and the catheter would have increasing amounts.
I called the hospital and explained what was happening, including some pain I has having in my lower right abdomen. My consultant called me and asked me to come in as he needed to make sure everything was in place correctly. So exactly 7 days after my original operation, I was back in hospital.
Without going into too much detail the long and the short of it seemed to be that the catheter had shifted within my bladder and when laying down it would not work correctly. To add to this the drain tube had shifted to be very close to the where the prostate used to be.
An ultrasound of my bladder showed that the balloon used with the catheter was no where to be found, and after filling my bladder to bursting point, which hurt! My consultant suggested inserting a camera up my penis (a cystoscope) to see what has going on. We talked it through and he suggested that a local anesthetic would be enough although it would be pretty uncomfortable.
Camera inseted into Penis!
As it transpired they opted to do a general rather than a local as the anaesthetist was concerned about the level of pain I would experience under local. I was happier knowing that I would sleep through it and made the anaesthetist promise that when I woke up later on I wouldn’t be forced to listen to Take That in recovery like last week!
Darkness descended for a few hours until I found myself back in my room with Diana at my bedside. The operation had been a success and I didn’t feel in pain despite having a camera put where no man every wants one, a new catheter, and new drain installed. I was also lucky as my consultant has suggested that he may need to insert a second catheter straight into the bladder by going in above the penis and through the stomach. This didn’t need to be done.
All told I was in hospital for 10 hours, had excellent service from all the staff and was allowed to return home. Just before I left they checked the drain and catheter again. This time there was 800ml in the catheter, and only 60ml in the drain!
Once home i hit the sack and 12 hours later woke to find 500ml in the catheter and nothing at all in the drain!! guess that was a job well done 