UROLOGY HYSTERIA

It seems, with a catheter, a permanent fixture type catheter at least, that once a year you have to have a doctor, a urologist, examine you and give you HIS okay that IT is okay, inside you, and you can keep having a catheter for another year. Then every month you get up early and take a shower before going into the Berkshire Urology place where a lovely nurse named Sue removes the catheter and replaces it with a brand spanking new one. Twice a week you have someone who doesn't need glasses, like Bonnie, replace the bag part of it. And then three or four times a day or whenever you remember or get a clue, like your trouser leg is damp, you empty the bag yourself into the loo or into a urinal set over a plastic garbage can next to the bed. These last two manouevres are relatively simple, the latter working like an on/off tap. Where we have problems, where Peg has problems, is the Once A Year Having The Doctor Examine You issue. 

Bottom line, no pun intended, she has an almost puritanical sense of modesty--which maybe has something to do with the way she was brought up or maybe all 97 year olds feel this way, don't know, never asked--but she won't let a male doctor intent on peering between her spread legs anywhere near her, however kind and nice and gentle and experienced he may be. Plus she is still recovering from her initial consultation of a year or so ago when the Head of Urology, Dr. Noakes or Noyes or something, told her her bend over the table and pull down her pants and next thing you know he had he on a table in a room full of medical students with her legs spread. And she went demented. And chewed him out, and wrote a letter to her GP, and to the hospital.

Long story short, unless they come up with a female urologist for her, Peg refuses to keep the Yearly Appointment, without which they will not continue to catheterize her, and if she doesn't have the cateheter her bladder will only partially empty and become infected again and we will go through what we did two years ago and she might die from the infection. And there are no female urologists at the urology center. Maybe there are at the hospital, but that is two different things. Apparently.

So. That's where we are. I have discussed it at length with Lovely Sue the Catheter Changer who has been on the phone arranging for a REALLY NICE DOCTOR to change his vacation dates to accomodate Peg but as he is not willing to undergo a sex change between now and Thursday, I imagine Peg will cancel this appointment, as she has done all the others. Bonnie meanwhile has been on the phone to every Urology Clinic between here and Timbuktu and also the VNA, Visiting Nurses, to see if anyone there is an MD or could be qualified enough to take on The Peg Challenge possibly by wearing a different hat and slinging a stethescope round her neck. 

Peg rang me today when she was midway through making a pot roast for six dinner guests tonight, she wouldn't say for whom--and was again in tears about The Looming Catheter Appointment and finally hung up on me when she decided I was "not on her side". This has all been going on since May. 

My big hope is to see if Tina the Hairdresser feels like taking a quick medical course between permanents.