Hey everyone! I hope that you are all doing just fine. I am ok. The winter seems to be over....for now. I am cautious.
This month's story takes us to the mundane world of the routine chest x-ray. Its one of those tech things, you do it so much, that you end up doing it on "auto pilot". I estimate that in my 18 year career I have shot about 17,000 routine chest x-rays. That means that I have said,"Take in a breath and hold it.......'beep'....you may breath" about 34,000 times!!!
So one day about 10 years ago there was a male patient in his 80's, hard of hearing and in a wheelchair, who needed a chest x-ray. I brought him into the x-ray room and asked him if he could stand. He told me yes and that he had to pee. I looked down and noticed that he had a Foley catheter in and thus he didn't have to pee. The pee was being collected by a tube that lead to a big urine collection bag. I told him very loudly,"Sir, you have a catheter in place, you don't have to pee! Its the catheter making you feel like you have to pee." To which he answered,"No no, I gotta pee." So to speed things along I said,"You have a tube in place....go ahead and pee away if you want!" He then proceeded to stand up, grab the catheter with one hand, his penis with the other and YANKED THE TUBE OUT!!!! With the catheter's retention balloon STILL INFLATED!
OUCH! This the kind of ouch that comes with making love to a cheese grater!!! Yikes! I couldn't believe what I had just seen. What followed was just as bad. After he pulled the catheter out, he PEE'D on the door frame to my x-ray room. I yelled at him,"What are you doing!!??" He says,"You said pee away." Technically he was right.
Take it easy people....I gotta go pee.
Gonzo
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