Pen 15

Last week marked a critical moment in my medical educational. A moment that can make or break any budding physician (that's right, physicians reproduce through budding...like yeasts). Last week, I learned how to place a urethral catheter. Vsskdjf2341eakbnrjhvlb...

Sorry, fell over and curled up into the fetal position on my keyboard. You see, I placed a catheter in a male practice dummy. "How did you know it was a male dummy?" "Didn't you notice the tiny balls?" I had sympathy pains for my artifical friend. Although it helps to pretend that I was torturing a rogue robot...a roguebot.

Let me walk you through the steps:

Step 1: Cut a hole in the box
Step 2. Put your...

Sorry, wrong steps. That's junk in a box. In need tube in a junk. Let's try again:

Step 1 - Place sterile sheet over the patient's lower abdomen
Now it looks like you're going to have a picnic on their tummy.

Step 2 - Place a second sterile sheet (this one with a whole in the middle) around the penis
Now it looks like your patient's junk is about to eat lobster.

Step 3 - Scrub the penis with iodine to kill any bacteria
Now it looks like your patient just had sex with Prickle

Step 4 - Coat the catheter in lubricating jelly
Now we're getting somewhere.

Step 5 - Insert the catheter
Now things get tricky. Slipping rubber tubing into a dude's package is not as easy or as fun as it sounds. It can collapse on the way up, requiring all sorts of twisting and turning. But we were given the advice that using a larger catheter can make things easier, since it is less likely to collpase.

This means that at some point in my medical career, I might get to say, "I'm sorry, I can't quite get this tube all the way into your penis. Let me go get a bigger one."