Karen had a couple of appointment with urology on Halloween, but she woke up feeling bad and ended up with a migraine. Overall, the bad days are fewer in between, which is good, but still they tend to run together. Her migraine medication allows for a second dose if the first one doesn't do the trick, and she ended up taking both, but she doesn't like how it makes her feel when has to take the second dose. She passes in and out of consciousness, and feels "loopy."
The appointments were actually scheduled while she was still in the hospital. When she peed she couldn't void completely, and even a catheter couldn't get the last 200 to 250 ml out. No one seemed to believe the catheter wouldn't drain the bladder completely, so everyone kept coming around to try their hand at. We had two different doctors and more nurses than I could count attempt it. Some flushing it, other's just trying to put it in further or less far, holding it at a certain angle, trying a thinner catheter, a straight catheter, you name it. But nothing worked. The bladder scan never showed less than 200 ml. Ever. Looking back, it was arguably the worst part of the care Karen received at Mayo Clinic Hospital. I'm sure some things felt worse than all the back and forth with the catheter, but you could tell it was not only painful but stressful as well, and they never got it to drain. There were way too many attempts made. All that pain and stress, for naught. The day they released her they scheduled a flow test and a follow up directly afterwards, but they scheduled it over a month off, on October 31st of all days.
We assumed the long delay was just to let the swelling from the operation go down, for things to heal up, and to make sure any medication that could be giving her side effects were out of her system. After all, everything seems to be working now. Karen says she doesn't feel like she's retaining anything when she pees, but that's how it was near the end of her stay in the hospital as well; it felt like she was voiding completely, but they'd want a bladder scan just to make sure, and then that would show otherwise (and here comes someone with a catheter). So I suppose it's possible she's still retaining.
I called to reschedule and was told the earliest they could get her in was December 25th. Oddly, it didn't strike me as Christmas until later, what hit me first was the huge delay until she could get in again. Two months! Maybe we assumed more from that initial delay than we should have. The scheduler could tell I was surprised by the delay and said if I talked to the office directly, they can sometimes open up an earlier slot, and offered to transfer me. Sure enough, they made an opening. November 26th. So we went from Halloween to Christmas, and then to the Friday after Thanksgiving. Karen joked that they must only work on holidays.
