Separation of the First Stage

 

Oh my god. The last 24 hours have been pure Grand Guignol horror show. The ordeal seems to be over, but I warn you, this post is not for the squeamish. 

As regular readers know, I've been working on my health recently. I've got the hypertension under control through a combination of medication and exercise, and I'm fighting the prediabetes with a strict, low-carb, no-sugar diet (I've lost 10 pounds since April 25!). Yesterday, I went to the urologist to look at my low urine flow.

If that's TMI, stop reading now because it only gets worse.

The doctor had me scheduled for a cystoscopy, an in-office surgical procedure that lets the doctor view the urinary tract, particularly the bladder and the urethra. The procedure is intended to identify problems with the urinary tract, early signs of cancer, infection, narrowing, blockage, or bleeding.

It's exactly what it sounds like. To be blunt, they run a camera through your dick-hole and down the shaft all the way to the bladder. Dick on a stick. Dick kabob. It's not comfortable, and what the doctor warned would feel like "some pressure" felt like needles being stuck inside of my penis. All that while laying on my back with my junk out for all the world to see.

About half-way or three-quarters of the way down, the doc encountered a "bulbar stricture" obstructing the way. He went in to open the stricture with what's called a "Knottingham dialator" but is basically just a wire with increasing diameter along its length. If the cystoscope felt like needles, the dialator felt even more so. To be blunt, it hurt, even though they used a Lidocaine jelly as a local anesthetic. 

But he managed to clear the obstruction and the doctor seemed quite pleased with the result of his work. The apparatus was removed and the doctor told me that I should be able to pee much better now, provided the stricture doesn't close back up. We scheduled a follow up to monitor my progress.

"You might see some blood in your urine," the doctor warned me as I left. That turned out to be a massive understatement, as that's when the real horror show began. 

I wouldn't say there was blood in my urine so much as to say there might have been some urine in the flow of blood that came out when I got back home. Worse, the flow wouldn't stop, it was a constant, non-stop drip, drip, drip of blood from my dick. I tried applying toilet paper and pressure the way you would treat a small cut, but the flow kept dripping. Blood, some of it coagulated, was getting all over the toilet and the bathroom floor. 

When I finally convinced myself the flow stopped or at least subsided, I pulled my pants back up only to later find the front of my jeans were soaked with blood.  

It got to the point where I wouldn't even use the toilet anymore to pee - I would undress and step into the shower where I could bleed freely and wash all the blood down the drain. The shower stall would soon look like I had butchered a medium-sized mammal in there, with pools of blood on the floor and splashes on the walls.

It would be an understatement to say the bleeding was distressing, and I was seriously considering going to the ER. I had to keep changing my pants as they became blood soaked, and I put towels over the chairs before I sat down to protect my furniture. There was no way I could go out in public, and was glad my fridge was stocked with enough groceries to last me a day or two. 

I didn't want to sleep in my bed for fear I would start bleeding in my sleep and not only stain the sheets, but ruin my mattress as well. Instead, I slept on top of the blankets, still wearing a pair of jeans. It turns out I made the right decision, as the front of  my jeans were blood soaked when I woke up, and the profuse bleeding resumed when I peed in the shower that morning.

I'm pleased to say that the bleeding seems to have stopped now, some 24 hours after my procedure.  I'm more than a little freaked out by the ordeal, and my blood pressure this morning was some 12 points higher than it was yesterday morning.

I recognize that concern about bleeding and blood breaking through to the clothes are worries that women have to deal with on a monthly basis. I now have a first hand and intimate conception of what that anxiety feels like. Considering that all this started last summer when I wound up in the ER with what doctors diagnosed as a UTI, my cross-gender empathy is significantly increased. 

I've urinated twice now without the bloodshed, so I think I'm out of the woods. The flow is less constricted than before, but my god, I have to wonder if this is a case where the cure was worse than the ailment.      

Sorry if I grossed you out, and for the record, the picture up above isn't mine - it's a hilariously bad AI response to a prompt for "mother and newborn in hospital" from last February. Anyhow, this blog is my record of the times, and it would be dishonest not to report on this here - there hasn't been much else on my mind for the last 24 hours.