It Only Hurts When I ... (cont.)

[This is a continuation of an earlier post. I have been out of the hospital, without any infection since Tuesday afternoon.]

Over the course of a week, I moved from it-only-hurts-when-I-breathe to it-only-hurts-when-I-laugh/sneeze/cough to it-only-hurts-when-I-pee to it-only-hurts-when-I-pee-and-I-have-to-pee-all-the-time-and-why-is-there-blood.

So, I ended up back in the hospital to treat a strongly suspected (and then confirmed) viral bladder infection. It is called the BK virus, and I now have a visceral aversion to all things BK. Sorry, Burger King.

My doctor's initial preference was to ride out the virus, saying, "The treatment is often worse than the condition." When the condition became intolerable, she raised the prospect of returning to the hospital for treatment. She left it up to me, but she was clearly leaning toward toward readmission, and I agreed.  So, following my regular appointment on Monday (1/16), I was wheeled by a nurse from the clinic, across two streets (in enclosed walkways), and into the hospital admitting office.

The next least aggressive treatment, after riding it out, is irrigating the bladder with saline solution continuously for as many days as it takes to flush out dead and dying tissue. Irrigation works because the virus invades cells, multiplies, kills the cells, and then spreads to neighboring cells when the cells fall apart. If you flush the dead tissue, you flush the virus before it has a chance to infect more cells. Of particular concern is that the virus can get into the blood or travel into the kidneys.

Irrigation is not painless, but it is less painful than riding it out.

The first step in irrigation is having a way to get fluid into and out of the bladder, continuously. One word: catheter. It's a two-lane catheter, with half of the tube heading in and half heading out. Then it splits into two larger tubes, one coming from the saline bag hanging from an IV pole and the other running into a bag collecting the outflow.

Overall, the catheter is about the diameter of a cheap ballpoint pen, a little thinner than a standard pencil. Getting the catheter into position is a painful but thankfully quick procedure. There's a numbing, lubricating gel involved, but, in my fortunately limited experience, it only numbs and lubricates up to but not including the sphincter at the bottom of the bladder. Yeowch!

[That's today's installment of Joe vs. BK. More will dribble out — ha! — in days to come.]