Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Did You Know?

I pee through my belly button.

For some of you this may be way too much information, but for others it might actually be interesting. I have what they call a mitrofanoff. A Mitrofanoff (mi-troe-fan-off) is a tube created inside the body to drain the bladder. During surgery, a tube is made using tissue from the appendix or small piece of the intestine. One end of the tube is tunneled into the bladder and the other end is made into a stoma (small opening) on the abdomen or in the belly button. A catheter is passed through the stoma and down into the bladder to drain the urine. This is called catheterization.

I get cathed every 3 to 4 hours during the day and every 2 hours during the night. One thing that is good is that I can tell when I need to be cathed. Sometimes it is less than 3 hours. At night I am sleeping so I'm not able to tell and that's why I get it done every 2 hours. This procedure has changed my life. It is much easier than cathing the other way. It is not painful. In fact I can't even feel it.

Many people are often fascinated with this procedure. One of which is my little cousin. She understands that I do things differently than other people. Her favorite thing to do (besides riding in the elevator) is to watch me pee out of my belly button. Whenever I need to be cathed, I let her know, and she will stop whatever she is doing to come watch. I love looking at her face as she stares in curiosity.

Jenni

3 comments:

Teoni said...

This fascinated me too, so much so I googled it :P Since I am used to changing a colostomy bag for one of the girls I care for but have never come across this.

Although I have to say the title confused me to start with!

Unknown said...

i’m an associate of mary anne radmacher’s and saw you’ve enjoyed her work. i know mary anne is so happy when people find inspiration from her words in the context of their daily lives. thanks for visiting her website. mary anne has written several books and shares her work in many forms including conferences and classes. If you’d like more information feel free to e-mail me at jessicaformaryanneradmacher@gmail.com. thanks for sharing her words! and i loved the blog about the snow in april. i was born in minnesota and remember trick-or-treating in the snow :) fun times!

Rai said...

the things that they can do now is just so fascinating.Makes you wonder what they'll be able to accomplish in 5 or 10 years from now.

Children do seem to have a rampant curiosity and it does them well most of the time(at least from what i've seen).