I was kind of excited and nervous all day, sort of more nervous that before the urethroplasty, because it was the day I’d find out whether I’d be rid of the suprapubic catheter.
After lunch I took the bus up to the hospital and after a short wait it was time to change into one of the lovely hospital gowns and go into the fluoroscopy room. This time we could skip all the messing around trying to squirt contrast up my urethra and just run it in through the suprapubic catheter. It took over an hour anyway but I managed to get over the weirdness of peeing on demand while lying under an x-ray machine and they got some good pictures.
In the first picture you can clearly see the stricture before the urethroplasty (but after the urethrotomy). “Mynning” is the tip of my penis and “kateterspets” is the end of the catheter they were using to put contrast in. All the stuff around the tip is the hand of the nurse who was holding everything in position.
The next two are the new pictures after surgery. You can see that my urethra is now a decent width all the way along. There’s a slight narrowing marked around where the graft is but it’s possible that was just a blood clot (a big lump did come out while I was peeing).
After x-ray it was time to go down to urology and see what the surgeon thought. He seemed very happy and said they’d remove the catheter. He was also asking about how the graft donor site in my cheek was doing. It seems he was used to putting in stitches but had left it this time on advice from his visiting colleague. From what I’ve read having stitches is much worse from a patient’s perspective and my cheek has healed quickly and well. I asked him when I could start having sex again and he said I could as soon as I felt ready. When I pressed him a bit he said maybe waiting another couple of weeks would be a good idea.
The nurse came to remove the catheter. After she cut the stitches holding it in place I felt a tug and thought it was out. Then there was another tug. Then a long pulling sensation. It seemed that there was roughly 20 cm of catheter coiled up in my bladder!
It was so nice to be able to walk home without the catheter irritating my bladder and to sleep without worrying about tangling catheter tubing. I really enjoyed my shower this morning.
Peeing is also a joy, with a good strong flow. There’s still a little bit of stinging and some bleeding afterwards but that should pass.