*** Note: I am not a medical professional, and the way that I have dealt with this issue should NOT be taken as the best way to deal with it. If you start having issues urinating at any point in time, your first point of call is your doctor. If you are unable to pass urine at all – go to the emergency department!***
In the interest of spreading information, I’m going to go through this in detail. I think that skimming over details for something like this isn’t in the best interest of those who might experience similar things…
*sigh* Ok, lets start from the beginning….
I’ve been experiencing pain whilst urinating since my catheter was removed back in April. I think Hans and I have been running with the idea that it was just tight from scarring, and that it should sort itself out in time as the scar tissue softens.
Because of this, in order to urinate, I have to manoeuvre things in a variety of ways. Not only to assist urine to pass in a stream (rather than just spurting around everywhere), but also to get the last dregs of urine out of my urethra. The latter generally involves a lot of pushing and shaking.
Anyway! So last Wednesday I noticed I was starting to need to move things a bit more to get urinating. By Thursday I was having to urinate and then gently squeeze under my scrotum and the shaft of my phallus to get urine flowing. By Friday, I was barely urinating at all, and I was starting to feel quite a bit of pain. Over the course of the weekend I got to the point where I could only void in drops – about 1-2 drops a second.
The pain that goes along with it is horrible. If I don’t need to go – it’s fine. But the need to pee comes on so quickly and severely that it can double me over in pain at times; and then I get to the toilet and can only pass urine 1-2 drops per second. It’s probably the closest to a 10 on the painscale I’ve ever come (I consider a 10 to be passed out from pain), and I need to remind myself to breathe at times.
I spoke to Hans and he moved my appointment to see him from June to 22nd May (it was the earliest I could see him). I told him I’d try to get a urethragram done up here to save him doing it, and he mentioned that I might need to be recatheterised via suprapubic catheter.
Over the course of the weekend, nothing got better. I did discover that if I lay down in the shower, the angle somehow made it easier to pee – so I spent a lot of time in there. But by far the most humiliating thing so far has been having to use incontinence pads again. Because I’m only passing urine in drops – it doesn’t have the force behind it to get everything out. As a result, I drip constantly through the day. I have had a couple occasions where I was only using a normal pad – and I leaked through it, my underwear and had a wet patch on the back of my shorts… Whilst I was at work… My advice? Just get the incontinence pads and suck it up. It’s better than the alternative.
By Monday, I’d been convinced that I should probably speak to a doctor about it. After explaining the situation and letting him know that Hans had advised an SPC and urethragram when possible, he got on the phone, called the X-ray department to arrange it, and ran a urine test. Which is where things got complicated.
He had organised a urethragram appointment but no SPC. When I asked about the SPC, I was told I could wait a week longer to see Hans before getting one placed. I got a call not long after he spoke to Hans, and he suddenly decided an SPC might not be such a bad idea after all.
I went in for the urethragram on Wednesday morning, but they refused to do it because I was having so much trouble urinating. The X-ray department sent me to the emergency department for an SPC placement… Who promptly told me that they weren’t going to place one. Instead they ran some blood and urine tests, told me I was showing signs of an infection, gave me some antibiotics and sent me on my way.
At this point I was between beyond caring, and absolutely livid. The next day I was called in to see my doctor to discuss the results of the urine test I did on Monday. The infection I had was resistant to the strain of antibiotics the hospital had put me on – so they changed them. I was asked if I wanted to pursue the catheter placement, but I told him that I just wanted to be left alone at that point, because I was beyond caring.
So!! To today.
I’ve been on the antibiotics for almost 5 days now. The pain is significantly reduced, but it’s still difficult to urinate.
I had my appointment with Hans during my urethragram yesterday afternoon. It turns out I have a stricture – it’s not very long, but it’s really tight. As in, can’t-see-the-contrast-dye-going-through-the-urethra-at-all tight. I need a stricture-repair to fix the issue.
At the moment it looks like it’ll be next week sometime. Much like after stage two, I’ll have a suprapubic catheter and a urethral catheter in initially, then I’ll go down to just the suprapubic before getting that out too. Hans said that he’ll probably leave the suprapubic in for a bit longer just to let things heal quicker – and I’m more than happy for that to occur. He did ask if I’d be okay uncatheterised until surgery, and I told him that things were moving along a bit easier than they were last week – so that should be fine.
He wants me to stay on the antibiotics until surgery, and said that he’s hoping just to go in, cut out the stricture and sew the two sides together. I *may* wake up with a buccal mucosa graft having been taken from my mouth though – we’ll see.
All in all, I’m not feeling too bad about it all. If I’m going to have issues, I’d rather have them now than later on. I’ll get more information on everything over the next few days.
My Transition FtM 