“Howdy everybody, and welcome to the very first episode of Make It Worse! Tonight, we’ll have two contestants vying to see who can make a bad situation even worse! It’s the game where nobody wins!
“Tonight’s topic is a fan favorite and one of the worst things ever! Give it up for KIDNEY STONES!
“Contestant Number One, how will you make it worse?”
“Passing the stone, Bob, would be worse!” responds Contestant Number One to wild applause.
“Right you are! Having kidney stones can be painful, but as they slide down the ureter — OUCH! — that’s definitely worse. Over to you Contestant Number Two. How will you make it worse?”
“Having the stone get hung up in the ureter, Bob!” Contestant Number Two’s answer is interrupted by even wilder applause and hails of laughter. The audience is loving it! “Believe me, from personal experience, it is worse!”
“Right you are! Not only are stones getting stuck in the ureter painful, they are dangerous! That’s definitely worse! Contestant Number One, stones are in your court, so to speak,” and the audience groans at the bad pun. “How can you make it worse?”
A hush falls over the auditorium as Contestant Number One ponders his response.
“Clocks ticking,” Bob reminds him .
“While the surgery to remove them,” he begins to gasps of disbelief, “the inconvenience and discomfort of combining the spinal block and Foley catheter, I believe, will make it worse!”
There’s a smattering of applause and some groans of disappointment.
“I believe we’ll have to go to the judges on this one!” Bob says with a grin touching the earpiece in his left ear. “Judges what do you say, is it worse?” He turns dramatically to look off stage as the cameras pan the fidgeting audience and contestants.
“And the judges say,” Bob pauses for dramatic effect. The tension is palpable. It could be cut with the proverbial knife. “It is worse before it gets better!” The audience goes crazy with applause and cheers with a few scattered boos from those who disagree.
After the calm is restored, all eyes turn to Contestant Number Two.
“Can you come up with something that is worse than the combination of the spinal block and Foley’s catheter?” Bob asks allowing some disbelief to creep into his voice.
Contestant Number Two looks confidently into the camera.
“I have two words for you, Bob,” he says smiling. “Morning wood!”
The silence that follows is deafening. No one even dares breathe.
Then to the man there is a gut-wrenching hew and cry of anguished sympathetic pain as the image of stiffing erection and constricting urethra sliding down the hard plastic tube of the Foley’s catheter sears into the mind.
Pandemonium rocks the studio as the show draws to a close.
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Image Attribution
“When you find out you have kidney stones“ by followthethings.com is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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Categories: Thoughts
The Psy of Life 
From my experience, the worst nightmare of a urinary catheter would be the blow to one’s masculinity from loss of control. But then they can offer as an alternative self catherization where you basically stab yourself in the groin 4-6 times each day. Sorry for the rant, Jack.
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Howdy Usfman!
I WELCOME the rant. I don’t know if I could give myself a Foley. I think it would take more mettle than I possess. Everything about the situation from the urinary tract issues to the paralysis after the spinal block challenged either my masculinity or my adultness. And, it has left me more tired than I thought possible.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Oh, my. Here’s to better comfort for you.
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Things got immediately better right after they pulled that damned Foley’s catheter. Talk about activating your trypanophobia!
Huzzah!
Jack
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Tonight’s sponsor: Viagra … !
[That’s how painful it was to read that]
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Now, that was funny! I wish I had thought of it, though.
Jack
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Calico Jack – The kidney stone adventure continues.
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And, to make it even worse you can add a nurse who is really, really bad at putting in the catheter. When my enlarged prostate got diagnosed, they tried medication to shrink it first. That lasted three months with going every two weeks to have the cath pulled, drinking a lot of water, and seeing if I could urinate. When I couldn’t, the cath had to go back in (a new one). I was hugely lucky that the nurse was a catheter expert and could shove that thing in past the prostate fast. It hurt, but blessedly briefly. Fortunately, there was no morning wood issue. I can only imagine.
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Oh, the mind boggles at all the possibilities of responses. (a) My kidney stone story began with a stone lodging in my urethra and completely blocking any outflow. That was a helluva story that deserves a good retelling. (b) The Kahneman study of the peak-end experience in which they used colonoscopies to determine that a longer lasting experience that ended with a mild level of pain actually caused the memory of the procedure to be rated better than what the most intense moments of pain would have you believe because it brought the average level of pain down. (c) I don’t think I’ve ever had one put in when I wasn’t under sedation of some kind. The first one I had, the doctor removed it quickly in one pull, which I judged not so bad. This last one, the doctor pulled it out slowly pausing several times to apologize for the pain. It made it much worse. I figured it was like a band-aid, it should be done as quickly as possible to get it over with.
I distracted myself during the night by imagining the “Make It Worse” game show and post. Trying to sleep with the catheter and the IV was hell. They would catch and tug or worse, I’d lay on them. Walking with the catheter was also annoying. Carrying the bag and having it tug and pull. Luckily, I didn’t have to get up to go to the bathroom or anything.
It is a good thing that my superpower is being easily amused. I found most of it more entertaining than anything else.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Quick is definitely better with catheters. The most annoying thing about the bag was sleeping. I tend to roll over, and couldn’t do that with the bag hung on the side of the bed. Being easily amused is an advantage.
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Sleeping was a miserable experience.
Jack
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Indeed
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