urology catheter
I work (for now), I love, I live, I have fun. Just with wheelchairs and drugs and spasms and stuff...
18 April 2020
Yikes! Well that’s been a fun two weeks or so. Not. Lockdown all started out ok. The sun was out and I was set on getting just a bit fitter. This brief video of me exercising is not speeded up. At all. No sir-eee https://youtu.be/lKE6OAxR9HI Then, just as the U.K. was approaching peak cases and hospitals were heroically, desperately bursting at the seams, I developed the main symptoms of Covid-19. A constant, exhausting and painful dry cough. A fever. In my case, a sore throat and a touch of nausea too. And anxiety through the roof. A doctor call-back confirmed I probably had it, as did a dashed paramedic visit to our son, who also had Covid-19, but with an […]
26 September 2017
21st. 30th. 40th. Decent excuses to party, nothing more… I’ve never really worried about milestone numbers as my youth boogied and boozed its way into the distance and middle-age snuck wearily and grey-flecked up on me. But I’m 49 as of this week. And the fact that in less than a year I’ll be 50 is… is, well, it’s weird. No matter that I’ve already got a disabled badge. That I can only manoeuvre my way around the house with a fetching NHS walker. That venturing outside requires a wheelchair and that I have self-catheterised for years. 50 will be a strange one. Probably. I got seven cards, two text messages, seven ‘phone calls. So far so normal for a […]
14 July 2017
I’ve bungee-jumped once. I’ve jumped out of three planes. I’ve (briefly) piloted a tall ship without bumping into the Isle of Wight and drowning eighty souls. I’ve self-injected painful drugs hundreds more times than I care to remember. Way back when, I’ve skied some of the most daunting black runs in France and Switzerland. Hey, I’ve sometimes dared to contradict my wife on matters of furniture, fabrics and fashion. But I’ve found few things scarier than contemplating a night on my own in a hotel with just my wheelchair for company. I wouldn’t even be taking my trusty walker with me to get me up and hobbling round the room. Packing the day before was frightening enough. Checking and re-checking […]
8 May 2017
Urology. The dark arts of investigating malfunctioning bladder and bowels. I doff my cap to anyone who enters or leaves medical studies and says, “I know, I’ll become an expert in wee and poo and stuff.” Sadly, like many a person with Multiple Sclerosis, I’m well-acquainted with urologists and their capacity for rummaging around and describing with complete precision the shape and size of my prostate. All the while chatting to me about the time of day or this afternoon’s weather. And the title of my blog, “One man and his catheters,” may just indicate one routine I have to follow three or four times a day. The first time I did it, the nurse training me, (no, she wasn’t […]