WARNING: Even without photos, this ain’t gonna be pretty.

It all started with a piss.

Well, actually it didn’t start with a piss. Because I couldn’t piss. And it was taking the piss.

It was August last year (sorry for the lateness of this blog, but I’ve been busy failing a degree (which is another story I owe you)) and I woke up and headed for the bathroom like every man does every morning of his life. I stood at the toilet, dropped my Iron Man PJ bottoms… and did nothing. I couldn’t wee. At all.

I mean, I knew my bladder was topped up, and I’d drunk water before I went to bed the night before, so why wasn’t it coming out? My bladder was full, but not uncomfortable. Yet.

I was confused as to why this was happening, but set about doing things logically.

I know, if I drink a load of water the pressure will shift whatever is causing this blockage and I’ll be able to pee properly! said The Brain, who – looking back – was not my biggest ally in this whole misadventure.

I drank a LOT of water which made my bladder painfully full and still I couldn’t go. I ran a hot bath and sat in it, not knowing why it would help, but The Brain was running things badly at this time.

I called the doctor and they gave me a 5pm appointment. I went down at lunchtime instead, the discomfort growing rapidly, and managed to persuade the receptionist to squeeze me in to visit whichever doctor could see me soonest. Thankfully I didn’t wait long.

The doctor took one look at me and only gave my stomach/bladder a cursory touch.

“It seems you do have a blockage,” he said, scribbling words onto a pad. He tore the page free and handed it to me. “This is a note you need to get you seen at the hospital straight away.”

“It’s that bad, huh?” I asked.

“You tell me,” he said. “But from what I can see, and by the look on your face, you need immediate treatment. You probably need a catheter inserted to try and rid yourself of whatever it is causing the stoppage in your urinary tract.”

I got a taxi to the hospital and we sat in traffic. All. The. Fucking. Way. Luckily it was one of my own taxi firm’s drivers so I got to swear in his ear all the way. Then when we reached the hospital an old man swathed in more gold chains than Mr. T crashed into us.  I jumped out the cab and hustled for the main entrance. I couldn’t wait and log myself as a witness, but thankfully my driver ushered me on and told me he’d call if needed.

The waiting room was a festival of the injured. All the seats were full and by now I was really becoming frustrated.

I handed the note to the receptionist/nurse and she said I would be seen soon. While waiting I tried for the toilet again but still had no luck. The missus then turned up and was as flummoxed as I was about the whole thing.

I was seen quickly, and the admission nurse (I don’t know the correct term) said they would get a catheter inside me as soon as they could. We were led to a bay (I was asked if I wanted a wheelchair but I said no… despite kinda wanting one) where I was instructed to lay back on a gurney and await a doctor. Laying down was almost as uncomfortable as standing up.

The doctor arrived and only had to look at my face to say, yes, he would be inserting a catheter.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had one fitted into your genital region, but if you haven’t, here’s what happens. Look at this picture:

Yep. A tube is fed through your Jap’s Eye and down your pipe. This pipe is called the urethra. And when it goes down said urethra, it is a very surreal and peculiar feeling. At first it’s sensitive and disturbing, but once it’s being fed along it’s not at all unpleasant.

Now, the deal was to get this tube all the way inside me until the open end of it pops into my bladder and drains all of my stockpiled piss back down the plastic tube and out the other end, emptying me of urine, anguish and despair. It’s a very simple procedure that sounds scarier than it is.

However, just when things were supposed to get better…

“Uh… it’s stuck,” said the nurse.

“Stuck?” asked the girlfriend.

“Stuck?” asked the doctor.

“Stuck?” asked the me.

She gave it a gentle tug (and not in a sexual way) and suddenly blood started to seep from from penis. Her face looked a little like mine did. Although mine was slightly whiter.

“Ok,” said the doc. “No need to panic.” He took the catheter from her and tried to pull it out of me, and then tried to push it further inside of me.

“It is stuck,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it was possible to feel any shittier than I had for the previous few hours but we’d successfully passed that.

He touched my arm with one hand, a lovely German doctor with a soothing voice, and with his other hand gave my knob another gentle tug.

“Ok, this is really stuck,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose with the gloved-hand that had just pulled at my dick. “I’m going to get a surgeon in and fit the catheter another way. The important thing is to empty your bladder right now.”

“It is?” I asked, looking at the blood now pouring steadily from where catheter-met-penis.

The surgeon arrived quickly, the doctor and the female nurse disappearing. The male nurse who remained did his best to distract me from the blood and the pain by talking to me about my tattoos. He was trying so hard that at one point I felt he was almost coming on to me.

Well, we’d already passed first, second, and third base on this date…

The surgeon entered; a young, good-looking man who made me even more self-conscious about me having my dick out.

He introduced himself and said he wasn’t going to waste any time sorting me out.

“Can you feel this needle?” he asked.

I shook my head. I had my t-shirt bunched up around my chest, covering the view south of that area.

“See this scalpel?” he asked, holding it in the air.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “Because I’ve already made the incision before I showed it to you.”

He was that quick and careful I hadn’t felt a thing (despite the numbness from the injection).

“Now,” said the surgeon. “I’m going to put a catheter in through your abdomen. It’s going to feel like I’m pressing on your bladder…”

“Well, it’s not like I’m going to piss myself,” I said.

The surgeon looked at the nurse, who looked at me, then back at the surgeon, and then they both laughed. Nervously.

“This is not going to be comfortable,” he said, his face falling stern.

Now I will ask you, dear reader, a question;

Have you ever been stabbed?

Because this is exactly how I imagine it feels.

Pushing the catheter through the hole in my stomach wasn’t the problem, because I couldn’t feel it due to the anesthetic. The problem was when the tube had got past the wall of my stomach I felt EVERYTHING.

I felt the tube pass through me as the surgeon put gentle force behind it. I couldn’t help but try and curl into a ball as the nurse held one of my arms and legs. Oh man, ‘discomfort’ wasn’t the fucking word.

But then…

Then…

Then I was showered in piss and blood and joy as everything in my bladder came out of the other end of the tube before the nurse managed to connect a colostomy bag to it.

“It’s done,” said the surgeon, patting my arm. “It’s done.”

I fell back, no longer feeling the intrusive tube in my stomach or the one stuck through my dick or the hell of an incredibly full bladder. I was soaked in blood and urine and I did not give a fuck. The relief was immense. Even as a writer I actually find it hard to summon the words I need to convey to you about how much of a relief this felt to me right there and then,

Shame it didn’t fucking last.

I was bleeding a lot from my penis. I took a couple of photos but deleted them. Trust me, you’re glad I did. The medical staff tried to remove the catheter from my dick but it wouldn’t budge. Thankfully, the tube coming out of my bladder/stomach kept me drained… but then it began to hurt.

“Of course it hurts,” said the surgeon sympathetically. “You’ve got a foreign object penetrating you.”

The hole in my stomach was probably the width of your little finger nail. The surgeon then sewed the catheter INTO THE FUCKING HOLE IN MY STOMACH so it wouldn’t come out.

They gave me morphine. Lots and lots of morphine. Well, they controlled the amount but they made sure they kept me bubbling just under the edge of consciousness/pain. I was given a small dose every two hours but I asked for it more frequently than that. I didn’t get any extra, however.

I remained in hospital over night and into the next day. I think. It was all a little hazy. The GF stayed by my side as I drifted in and out, and I recall her cosied up on the bed with me at some point.

In the morning, another doctor came to examine me.

“You are still bleeding,” he said, cupping my knob like an old friend in his big black hands. “This catheter must come out.”

“But it’s stuck.”

“It is stuck.”

“How are you going to get it out?”

“Surgery, my friend.”

Thank fuck I was already doped up and lying down or I think I would’ve fainted.

He left, and Alicia had gone home to eat or wash the stink of my blood and piss from herself, so I was left alone in a hospital bed, tubes coming out of me, staring at the ceiling through morphine eyes. Surgery? To remove a tube that was probably over half a foot inside me and my old chap?

My old chap. Dick. Knob. Womb Raider. Prick. Cock. Schlong. No, these are not all names that people call me… well, they are, but the point is there are lots of different fucking words for the male phallus. Here’s some more:

It was while I was contemplating all these wondrous words that I absentmindedly gave my dong/dagger/ying-yang/tool an exploratory caress. I felt the urethra where the tube went in, and it was still bleeding. And then, as I felt down the shaft (I feel like I’m writing porn here) I could feel the tube going aaaaallll the way down and inside me, past my bollocks and towards my gooch. The gooch – as described by Johnny Knoxville in Jackass – is the area between ‘your balls and your butt’. And it was here that I found the bubble at the end of the catheter! (See, the earlier diagram told you it would be important). This bubble was the thing causing the catheter to be stuck inside me.

I could squeeze it gently; a strange balloon expanding and contracting beneath my skin.

“Nurse,” I croaked as one walked by. “Can you get the doctor.”

He came quickly and I told him what I had found. He put on some gloves and told the nurse to raise my legs and for me to hold my knees towards my chest. This was not easy with a tube coming out of my stomach. I saw the doc clean a needle and he disappeared beneath my raised knees.

With a quick jab of the pin he popped the balloon of the catheter and the thing wriggled completely free of my dick, again accompanied by a shower of blood. But it was gone, and my dick was free of its plastic overlord. I think this is the closest us men will get to childbirth, so I feel you, ladies. I have been there. Except I gave birth to a plastic snake.

“By finding that balloon you saved yourself from surgery,” the doctor said as the nurse padded me in bandages.

“How would you have known where to look?” I asked him.

He pursed his lips. “We wouldn’t. We would have kept cutting until we found it.”

Sweet Valley High.

I was released later that day, armed with a bag of medical supplies and a wonderfully large bottle of morphine. I didn’t think I was fit enough for home, but looking back there would’ve been no point in keeping me in. All I was doing was sleeping morphine dreams and taking up valuable bed space. A nurse actually apologised as I left, and the doctor told me to rest, rest, rest, as I had – in his words – been ‘through a severe trauma’.

The next week was tough, but I got through it with the help of my good woman. And morphine. My stomach burned like hell, and the urinary tract down my dick was ‘ripped to shreds’. Luckily I didn’t have to piss ‘properly’ as the catheter through my stomach meant I could just go to the loo and direct it into the toilet whenever I needed to go. I didn’t need a colostomy bag as I was in control of my waterworks. Barely.

One (more) thing that was very uncomfortable was when my bladder was empty. When the tube had run dry into the pan, it almost felt as if my bladder was being sucked up through the tube and it was pretty fucking painful. I started to dread urinating, and drank a lot less than I regularly would; anything in a bid to not piss.

Every couple of days I had to go to the doctor’s to get my dressing changed, and then after a week the community nurse came to my place to take the tube out of my abdomen. This concerned me, as I thought I’d have to go to hospital to have it removed. It was stitched into my stomach, remember?

“Oh, it’s stitched into your stomach,” she said.

“I know,” I said through gritted teeth as she pulled on it.

“You may have to go to hospital for this,” she said.

“Just cut it out of me,” I said. “I need it out. I have to sleep on my back every night and it hurts when my bladder is empty.”

She said ‘ok’ and pulled out a small pair of scissors from her bag. She cut the stitches and then put a tissue around where the tube entered my stomach. She pulled it out slowly but surely, and I barely felt a thing. A little blood splashed onto my stomach, but after what I’d been through it didn’t bother me.

She padded me up as I lay on my sofa. I asked if I could sit up and she said ‘sure’.

Sounds strange, but I hadn’t sat up properly for over a week, and it felt good and weird to be able to sit straight without stitches and tubing pulling at my washboard-like-abs. I breathed a sigh of relief and she left, but with a warning that I may encounter blood clots in my urine.

I brushed it off. Nothing could be worse than what I had endured.

But.

Oh.

My.

Holy.

Fuck.

It was worse. Worse than the original blockage. Worse than the stuck catheter. Worse than being stabbed with a tube. Pissing out blood clots has to be the single most painful thing I’ve ever done.

I pissed fine for a few seconds the first time I went after having the tube removed, but then there was a little blood, and then the flow stopped and I was. Pissing. Pure. Blood.

I leaned over the loo, one hand on the wall to support me, one hand on my dick, and my eyes bugging out at the drip drip drip of blood splashing the pan beneath me. And the pain… the pain… It felt like I was trying to piss fire. I think maybe I was trying to piss fire. I genuinely can’t remember the last time I cried solely in pain… maybe not since I was a kid, but this was beating me. Beating me badly. I was just about to break, physically and mentally.

This went on for an afternoon, and when I woke up the next morning it continued. I was done. I called the hospital and spoke to a doctor who told me to drink lots of water.

“I don’t want to,” I pleaded. “I don’t want to piss.”

“I promise you it will fix it,” he said. He was fantastic over the phone to me. I wish I’d caught his name. “You have my word if you drink lots of water it will move your blood clot.”

“You promise?” I felt like a little kid.

“I promise.”

I drank a lot of water but I really didn’t want to.I watched TV for a bit and went to bed. Because I hadn’t pissed properly for a day or so it didn’t take long before I was stood in the bathroom.

I dropped my PJs, standing in a ‘big boy wee’ stance, one hand on my Johnson, the other against the wall… I was almost hopping from foot-to-foot… the expectation was killing me… I could feel it filtering from my bladder, along my urethra… I felt the familiar throb just under my gooch as the clots tried to dam me up down below…

And then… and then I felt it… I felt…

Like a fucking volcano erupting as the blood clots (2 of them) shot out like little bolts of lava, and my piss went everywhere. I pissed on the seat, I pissed on the floor, I pissed on the wall behind the loo, I pissed down my legs, and I think I pissed in the bath enough to make it half-full. You will never see me happier than I was at that moment in my bathroom, grinning and covered in piss. It truly was a beautiful moment.

(I bet some of you are thinking about Quentin Tarantino’s scene in Desperado, right?)

 

It was all good. It was all done. That had to be it, right? No more pain or suffering, no more blood clots, blockages, whatever?

Not quite.

Now, I’ve rattled on enough (I think this is my longest blog to date) so I’m going to try and keep it concise. I had a follow-up appointment at the hospital where I was told I’d need a camera placed inside me (yet again, down my thang) to see if it was truly over. I fought this. I didn’t want anything else being shoved in or out of me, and when the day came I was a fucking wreck.

In the hospital (urology department, I think) I sat in a small waiting room, dressed in a gown, waiting for the nurse to fetch me. She came, leading me to an examination room, and as we got to the door I stopped. I was frozen in fucking terror.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

I was shaking. “N-no,” I said. “I really can’t do this.” I was almost crying. That’s how scared I was. After all the tubes, the tears (ripped dick), tears (from my eyes), the blood, the fear of pissing, and everything else, I could not handle anything more being done to me.

She held my hand. “I promise you this is nowhere near as bad as you think it’s going to be. You have my word.”

I may have had her word, but I had no words. She led me onward. I lay on a bed, three nurses around me. The main nurse talked me through everything. She squirted some water down my urethra and I tensed up as she slipped the camera inside…

And it didn’t hurt. I was so fucking surprised I gave a little laugh of nervousness.

“Told you it wasn’t that bad,” she smiled.

I didn’t think they would find anything, and it was surreal seeing the inside of yourself on the monitor of some medical equipment… but there it was, just below my gooch. A puckered blockage that looked like an arsehole.

“There it is,” she said. “And it’s pretty severe.”

“It is?” I asked.

“It’s bad enough that I’m shocked you can still urinate now,” she said.

I felt a chill that wasn’t from the cold water being pumped inside me.

“We need you back in as soon as we can see you,” she said, and I was free to go.

The appointment was supposed to be after Christmas 2015, but in early December the hospital called me and told me I was found an appointment in three days time! In I went, into another gown, another hospital bed, and then finally into theatre.

The surgeon and nurses hooked me up to an IV and an anesthetic, and talked to me as I tried to relax.

“Are you gonna get me to count backwards from 10 until I fall asleep?” I asked, recalling the time I had my appendix removed.

“Nope,” said the surgeon, and I was out.

I woke up in a hospital with another catheter down my dick. It shocked me into being fully awake and I called for a nurse, begging her to take it out of me. I could feel the almost familiar discomfort returning, along with the ensuing panic… but she talked me down and summoned the surgeon.

“Everything went fine,” he said. “But now you must rest. If you can pass me X amount of urine (I forget the measurement) I will allow you home, but not before.”

The next morning I woke early and a nurse was stood at my side, filling my water jug.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I’d like to go home,” I said.

“We’ll see what we can do,” he said, and took out my catheter, cleanly and painlessly. There was a little blood, but nothing to worry about.

He kept topping-up my water jug, and I kept topping up my bladder, and eventually I managed to piss into the cardboard container they supplied me. I barely got it halfway.

“You can’t go home until you reach the line on the container,” the nurse said with sympathy.

“It’s ok,” said a doctor as he entered the room. “He can go. We need the bed. I am sorry.”

I was already getting dressed. “No need to apologise,” I said.

It’s 6 months on now and I have had not one problem pissing since that final operation. They still don’t know what caused it (probably a go-kart crash 12 years ago!) but – even to this day – I pee so freely and without any problems that I’m amazed I didn’t realise there was a problem years ago.

So guys, what I’m saying is, get the fuck checked out if you think there are any issues with your waterworks. It could be any of a number of things, but don’t leave it too late. If I had caught on sooner, and taken my skinny ass to a doctor, I may have saved myself massive penile trauma and a tube in the gut.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, you need to go check out your old chap, and I need to dedicate a song to my penis: