So Thursday I go in to the urologist for an exam. The exact nature of the complaint I shall spare the reader, save only to say that All Is Not Well In Bladdertown.
I asked my doctor if this exam would involve a catheter, and she make the noncommital noise while-not-meeting-my-eyes thing that indicates that it’s entirely likely I will spend part of Thursday with things inserted in that land where stuff was not meant to go. (She did the same thing when I asked if my nerve conduction test was going to hurt. In case anyone’s wondering, that hurts like death on a stick.)
This does not fill Ursula with glee.
I do not want to google about this sort of thing, because I am not keen on fifty million horror stories, plus photos, about how catheters are a conspiracy of holistic medicine, how the catheter killed and ate my cousin, how if anyone is catheterized, the terrorists have won, etc, etc. So I will throw myself ‘pon the mercy of my readership, who collectively appear to have had every medical procedure known to man short of autopsy, and I wouldn’t even rule that out.
Will this hurt? Is it more uncomfortable than a pap smear? I know it’s supposed to be much easier on females, having rather less distance to travel. Are we talking ten seconds of lying back and thinking of England, or twenty minutes of unbridled misery? What is the scoop? How nervous do I have to be?
