Sunday, June 12, 2022

Our quirky bodies

 Even if I drink a lot, I never pee very much. I can go ten hours without emptying my bladder. I think my tissues just hang on to water, as they seem to be doing right now. I had my knee replaced on May 17th and, as I write this ten days later, it’s still quite swollen. The swelling isn’t going down as fast as I’d like, but maybe that’s the case with everyone whose had this surgery.  

At the hospital, after surgery, they get you up to go to the bathroom. They place a little plastic pee-catcher under the toilet seat. You pee into that so the nurses can measure your output. Even though I’d been given fluids intravenously, I peed only a few tablespoonsful. Despite my protestations, the nurses assumed I was holding urine in my bladder. They wouldn’t let me go home until they were sure I’d emptied it—this, I guess, to ensure everything was working properly. They insisted on doing an ultrasound on my bladder to see what was in it, a procedure that delayed my discharge. The ultrasound showed that my bladder was empty. Told ya!

I’ve always gotten blisters exceptionally easily. A few years ago, I walked about 100 yards in Crocs shoes without putting socks on first, figuring I could make it from our room at Asilomar to the dining room. When I got back, I had huge blisters on both feet. My theory is that my blister-making capability is another example of my tissues hanging on to fluid. By the way, my blister problem was largely solved with the introduction of socks like SmartWool that cling smoothly to your feet with no wrinkles.

I don’t know if my theory holds any water, but I’m sticking with it.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

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