Hello!
I’m a 25 year old Mumma of a 6 month old.
I’m looking for some advice/story sharing/any insight or knowledge into my current situation.
Last month I went into acute urinary retention - out of complete nowhere, I was completely unable to wee. I ended up in A&E after over a day of being unable to wee and hours spent desperately trying on the toilet. I was catheterised, admitted overnight, had bloods & an ultrasound (all normal results). When they took the catheter out the next day, I was still unable to void myself, and so was sent home with intermittent self-catheters.
A week later I seemed to be having bladder spasms and so the intermittent catheters weren’t working (almost like my body was pushing them out before they could drain my bladder fully 😳) and again, went into complete retention and had to go back to A&E. They put a catheter in with a leg bag that now stays in for the foreseeable future.
The catheter is pretty uncomfortable and tugs at every movement, but more than that, I’m really beginning to struggle emotionally with what this will mean in the long term. I think this is largely down to frustration and confusion at how blasé the doctor(s) were when I was the hospital.
When I was being discharged with the self-catheters the first time it happened, I asked the doctor what he thought could be causing it (being a healthy, young woman with no history of medical conditions/hospital admissions and a straightforward homebirth with no tearing/postnatal issues), his reply was ‘it can just be one of those things. The catheters might need to be a life-long feature, we can’t tell at this stage”.
When I began to get a little visibly upset, shocked by the potential permanency of this condition (whatever it is!), he retorted that there was no need to feel upset; lots of women have this problem and the catheters become less painful with time.
I’ve been told I’ll have an appointment through for urodynamic studies and an appointment for a ‘trial without catheter clinic’ but neither of these appointments have come through yet, almost 2 weeks down the line and I’m beginning to feel so, so frustrated and so so confused by this whole thing.
Since this has all happened, I have completely no sex drive, I don’t even feel attractive enough to kiss my husband. I don’t have the confidence to go to the gym (nor do I think I’d be able to with the pain of the catheter tugging), I’m living in baggy joggers because I’m too afraid people will see the catheter bag otherwise, I’m struggling with energy to go on play dates/lunch dates with friends and our babies, I feel guilty for the effect this might be having on my bub, I feel tearful, lonely and pretty embarrassed by the whole thing.
Of course, things could be so much worse and I am so grateful that I have my health otherwise, and perhaps I do just need to ‘man up’, but i’m really struggling to simply accept this and could really do with some reassurance/insight/understanding from some fellow women/Mummas.
Thank you and so sorry for the rant ♥️
I can’t understand why this is happening to a healthy, active young woman (I’ve never had a hospital admission, no medical conditions, had a straightforward homebirth, no tearing or incontinence issues postnatally etc), and I can’t understand why the doctors seemed to so easily brush it off as ‘one of those things’. When I asked the doctor discharging me the first time it happened how long he thought I’d need the catheters, his reply was “it could be a lifetime”.
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Women's health
Urinary retention/catheters
11 replies
allylally · 22/01/2019 03:58
OP posts:
Kittycuddles ·
22/01/2019 07:58
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