The point of a catheter is for urine to flow from your bladder and out into a bag or container of some kind.  For wee to flow freely, the catheter tube has not to be blocked in any way. If it is, then obviously pee can’t flow out, or flow out properly and your bladder is full of urine. It may be that only when your bladder is full, is the pressure high enough to force pee through the semi blocked tube. In my case, if my bladder is full, I get spasms.

When you get a UTI, you gets lots of sediment in your urine. Guess what sediment does to a tube? Yes, it either blocks it, or partially blocks it.  Having had a UTI, with lots of sediment that looked like it might block the catheter, I requested that the District Nurse change the catheter for a new, not clogged up one. To me, a layman with a basic concept of plumbing, that seemed like a sensible plan – pee would be able to drain freely and there would be no urine retention ( also a cause of UTI’s ).  To my surprise, the DN wasn’t convinced by the abject bloody logic of my theory, and declined to change the catheter ( on the basis that doing so might introduce an infection.  The fact that I ALREADY had an infection seemed not important, the fact that I was already taking antibiotics that would STOP an infection seemed not relevant either )

I’ve badly spasmed for 7 days and nights now, and suspected that my bladder not draining is at least possible. This morning I saw that pee was escaping from my willy, AROUND the catheter tube. Now that implied strongly to me that the tube itself was blocked, at least partially.  Having lost faith in the District Nurses, who seem to base all of their actions on whether or not they might be sued for doing something, i donned rubber gloves ( with Francesca’s help ) got another catheter ( yes, I’d ordered a spare ), sprayed iodine ( that I happened to have ) over my willy, and syringed out the fluid from the balloon that keeps a catheter inside the bladder. Having withdrawn the blocked up tube, I then watched a full male flow of pee and sediment arc into the air, that went on for 15 seconds. I then inserted another sterile catheter, syringed water into the balloon tube and observed whilst I steadily pee’d for another 20 seconds.  I think it’s fair to say that the catheter HAD been blocked, and my bladder has NOT been emptying for 5 days, giving me non stop spasms and hardly any sleep, and contributing to my UTI not resolving.

As a capable, dexterous and logical guy, I was able to deal with this ( in the end by myself ).  Had i been senile/partially sighted/non dexterous I would NOT have been able to, and would have suffered torment and sleep deprivation for God knows how long.

Yep, yet again I’ll be writing to the people in charge…  I really don’t mind the actual process of complaining….

….but I really object to the fact that I have to in the first place.