‘I really do think you should think seriously about that operation,’ my urologist told me about a year ago. The plumbing had deteriorated further and, in a calculated gamble for more tranquil twilight years, I eventually capitulated, submitting in early December to a so-called TURP, a transurethral resection of the prostate.
Two days later, he sent me home with a reassuring message: ‘It’s settling down nicely, but don’t be alarmed by a little blood in the urine in a few weeks’ time. Expect a sort of “dry rosé” colour when the scabs start to fall off.’ I took that as a green light for a family Christmas in northern Spain, a plan marred only slightly by my Spanish wife Marina’s wrist fracture (she tripped on the stairs) shortly before we set off on Brittany Ferries.
And Christmas did indeed prove largely pleasant and untroubled. It was only when the younger generation left us to fend for ourselves that TURP-related complications began to surface. Initially, these took the form of sudden, extreme urges to pee – so much so that I found myself irrigating several spots around Marina’s hometown, requiring her to grovel on my behalf: ‘Please do forgive him, he’s not well! Don’t get the idea he does this kind of thing all the time!’
But when the scabs began to flake off, I realised that mere incontinence was for beginners. ‘A little blood in the urine’ proved absurdly understated and the alleged affinity to dry rosé downright misleading: more like crusted port, I reckoned. Soon, the coagulating flakes were beginning to block the exit altogether until sheer pressure eventually pushed them out, bringing temporary relief before the gruesome cycle began all over again.
Then, during the night before our scheduled ferry home, no degree of bladder pressure sufficed to shift the bung. How long, I wondered, before I would, quite literally, burst? Hospital beckoned urgently but, given our obscure location, the only realistic solution was for Marina to drive me there. Remarkably, despite a phobia of nighttime driving, a single usable arm, a right-hand drive car and a couple of near misses, we made it to Urgencias without mishap.
All was eerily quiet at that hour, but with a cursory ‘¡Disculpe!’ the duty nurse deftly eased in a ‘sonda’ (catheter) – the initial agony giving way instantly to sublime relief. A line-up of four oracles then opined on my case, exhorting me to abandon all other plans. It would take days to sort this out and anyway, how did I fancy a bladder blockage during a 24-hour ferry journey in rough seas miles offshore?
During the night before our scheduled ferry home, no degree of bladder pressure sufficed to shift the bung
Soon I was clad in one of those puzzling hospital nighties that shield your front modesty, but not your rear, which is inexplicably exposed to the four winds. The nightie is an especially bizarre set-up when various drips and sluices are also snaking under the hem to rendezvous with the catheter. Meanwhile, the medics were intent on flushing me out, rigging up a giant syringe to dislodge the stubborn accumulation of ‘coágulos’. And goodness, how many of the nasty little blighters did that diligent young urologist suck out before my very eyes.
Otherwise, I was enjoying my hospital quarters, the delightful nurses and even the food. I was even warming to my eccentric roommate, the giant, rotund Goyo, whose vast belly refused to be harnessed in any hospital garb. His verbal diarrhoea (incomprehensible dialect or speech impediment?) gushed forth torrentially, his spicy oaths almost our only linguistic overlap. But I did grasp that the inflamed testicle that had landed him in hospital was causing acute discomfort, necessitating urgent nocturnal demands for painkillers, cold compresses, sleeping pills – anything to tame the pain.
As time went by, despite his snoring, I started to like this cacho pan (salt of the earth) and, incongruously, we began to bond, our shared ordeals bridging linguistic and cultural gaps. And when the oracles finally deemed my flow to be not just ‘all clear’ but apt to ‘put most young men to shame’, Goyo congratulated me and delivered the full Spanish backslapping, cheek and neck-tweaking routine.
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