RICK HEALTH UPDATE – THE CASE OF THE MISSING URINE
To bring some of you up to speed, a few weeks ago, I fell, which through an unusual set of circumstances, led to me contracting cellulitis; a bacterial infection that involves the lowest levels of the skin. It’s extremely painful and can last longer than it takes an Illinois kid to graduate kindergarten.
Well, it all took an unexpected turn late last week. After about 10 days in a hospital, I’d been in a rehabilitation facility for a few weeks waiting for my leg to completely mend and to be able to start walking on it again. Suddenly, last Saturday, I realized I hadn’t peed in over a day. So unlike me! I usually love to pee! I mentioned it to a nurse. For the next several hours, I was asked by other staff members at the facility “have you peed yet?“ more times then Nick Cannon gets asked, “are you the father?“
When, after about another 16 or 17 hours, they became concerned. It’s highly unusual to not pee for that length of time. They needed to do something. Normally, the best way to make me feel the need to urinate is put two loads of groceries in my arms and stand me in front of my locked apartment door. That apparently wasn’t an option in this case
So, the decision was to catheterize my penis. If you don’t know what catheterization is, thank your lucky stars. It’s a procedure I can only assume was invented by Dr. Mengala in the Nazi concentration camps. It involves taking a hose, preferably a clean one, and inserting it as far as you can into the urethra. You know, the pee hole. You keep pushing it in until you reach the bladder. It’s like drilling for oil but with more urine. I’m sure they’ll deny it, but I swear to God the hose they used said, “property of Oshkosh Fire Department” on the side. And I am not exaggerating when I say it was the most painful, awkward, and traumatizing experience of my life. Kind of like the time I went to Country USA but with LESS urine.
Having a catheter rammed up your wiener is the kind of thing nobody should ever have to experience, especially more than once in a lifetime. However, since I still had not urinated eight hours later, why not give it the old college second try? Following in the old adage, “if you do not succeed at first, don’t succeed again“, another nurse attempted to Roto-Root me. This nurse seemed a little less confident and a little less experienced. Suddenly, I had a NEW most painful, awkward and traumatizing experience of my life.
How was the second attempt to snake-my-drain worse? Well, first, the nurse could not find my bladder. She was poking around inside me with the hose like a pigeon on the street looking for a peanut. Secondly, in the first procedure the nurse eventually removed the hose from my pee hole slowly, all-be-it, still painfully. However, during the second procedure, the nurse let ‘er RIP.. She pulled the hose out of my penis like she was starting up the Lawnboy. To say I let out a cry like a little girl would be a disservice to little girls everywhere.
Having failed again, the next plan was to give me a pill that might make me pee. Why that wasn’t plan one I’ll never know? They decided to give the pill three hours or they would insert a different kind of catheter. Watching the clock as it ticked away to the end of that three hours was like watching an Old Timey prison film with a gangster waiting for the governor to call with a pardon before midnight and the call never comes.
As the minutes ticked away and still no urine, I resigned myself to my fate. Third attempt, this time with something called a Foley catheter. This involves inserting a balloon in your urethra. I guess I wouldn’t have minded it so much if they hadn’t twisted the balloon into a poodle dog first. In the end, they didn’t find any urine on this expedition. That, despite the fact that I drank enough water that day to fill Appleton‘s Mead Street pool. Where was my urine? Somewhere in my body, was it playfully hiding from some of my other body fluids like my saliva and bile? You know, a little Pee-Pee Peak-a-Boo. Was it buried in New York Giants Stadium next to Jimmy Hoffa? Or perhaps, living the good life in Buenos Aires like long missing hitchhiker DB Cooper?
I mean things don’t just vanish… particularly things that are inside your body.
When they got all of the way in and found no sign of urine, and the only liquid spurting out of me was tears, they decided to suspend the effort and send me to a hospital.
Within hours, a doctor at the hospital was able to determine that the reason they couldn’t find the urine from my bladder…(DRAMATIC ORGAN) there wasn’t any! How’s that?
Well, one of the antibiotics I’d been receiving for my cellulitis attacked my kidneys and stopped them from working. Hence, no urine. My bladder was dryer than Tammy Baldwin‘s panties at a Deer-Hunter Widows Weekend male revue.
The doctors said that kidneys tend to repair themselves but I would have to pass a lot of urine to rid myself of the bad agents that caused the hopefully, temporary damage. I didn’t take that sitting down. Yesterday, I drank water like I was at a Mormon wedding. I peed over 20 times. In fact, I had more water pass through me in one day than the Panama Canal.
The funniest part of this story (not to me, of course) but to some of you sick bastards is this. The problem was with my kidneys. My kidneys. Not my bladder. The three extremely traumatic catheterizations to probe my bladder and all my suffering that went with them were for naut. My bladder was accused of a crime it didn’t commit and it was I who paid the price. All three procedures were as unnecessary as the 1985 Bears Super Bowl season and just as painful to remember. -RcMcNeal-
