I was diagnosed with the disease multiple sclerosis in the summer of 1991 at the age of 33. I don't tell you the following info for pity or sympathy. I accepted my plight a long time ago and realize I was just dealt a bad hand. I just want to inform people what can happen to them with MS. The first 20 years were tolerable but the last six have been challenging to say the least. In 2011 I developed MS lesions on my spinal cord. The lesions are interrupting signals to my lower body and affecting all my bodily functions below my waist. I can no longer stand or walk. As a matter of fact, my legs aren't good for anything. I use my hands and arms to lift and move legs and feet at least 100 times a day and I don't do anything. My legs are just dead weight. Consequently, I'm on my 3-wheeled scooters 100% of the time. The last thing I see when I go to bed at night and the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning is my scooter which I named "Ginger".
On of the things that is affected by those MS lesions on my spinal cord is my bladder. I've cathetered myself full-time since January 2000 so I'm used to that. I'm guessing my spinal cord lesions must have been developing since that time. If your worried about self-cathing don't be. It isn't painful at all. If you use a lubricant it should not be a problem. And I should know because I've self-cathered approximately 34,125 times give or take a couple hundred. I cath five or six times per day. I've heard from people that the Foley catheter hurts when removed from the bladder. The Foley is used for operations. In my 17 years I've also had two bladder infections that needed medical attention. I can tell now when a bladder infection is starting. I get funny feelings in my genital area. Nowadays, when I get those feelings I start drinking water. That seems to take care of it. Usually, 32 ounces of water seems to stop my bladder infections. For anyone that doesn't know people can now get 200 catheters per month free. I'm on Medicare and Medicaid and I guess the government decided it was cheaper to pay for catheters instead of hospital visits.
I'd always wondered
how many times I could catheter without it doing something to my
urethra. I found out in the spring of 2014 what can happen. When I
catheter I use a lubricant called Surgilube. I found the Surgilube tube is easier to handle than a KY Jelly tube. I apply a
little of that on the end of my catheter and it slides up my urethra
easily. In the spring of 2014 though I was having trouble inserting catheters. What had happened after 17 years of cathing is
that my urethra had developed scar tissue and narrowed. The
urethra can be subject to narrowing so if you catheter be aware of that.
Stretching the urethra assures
the passage stays open and allows for urine and semen to pass through. Stretching
a urethra is called “Sounding”. Urethral
sounding
is
the medical use of probes called “sounds”
to
increase the inner diameter of the urethra
and
to locate obstructions in it. So
that was the problem with my catheters not getting to my bladder very
easily. When I met my urologist the first thing he did was insert
a cystoscope into my urethra to view what was going on. He then
inserted three “sounds.” To me they looked like sticks of spaghetti that come out of a box in the grocery store. I'm not exactly sure how the
sounds work but my urethra widened and cathing was easy
again. That was the spring of 2014 but it happened to me again in the
spring of 2016. This time I knew what to expect. I went back to my urologist and had another
sounding done to my urethra.
Scooterjon
Scooterjon
