Quote from: wayupnorth on December 20, 2022, 07:28:28 AMDid you get partial or full anaesthesia ? I've read somewhere that you don't need the catherer if you go for full anaesthesia. A lot of doctors don't use it anyways. I'd rather swim in my pee than have that thing in me. How about the poop, how do they collect it ?
I can explain that a bit to you.
Regional will always need a catheter for a few days or so because you can‘t control your lower body really.
General will also need a catheter but only after a certain surgery time and only for a short time afterwards (some nice doctors take it out while you are still unconscious).
I did general and was under 3 1/2h, didn‘t have one. You don‘t just pee yourself, rather you CAN‘T pee because heavy opioids will make it impossible to do so. When I awoke the worst pain was my bladder. Felt like exploding but couldn‘t pee for an hour. Was horrible but after an hour it went away and I just peed in a bottle (no reason to have a catheter at that point, you just pee normally with a bottle between your legs, so what this user “QuarkSoup” writes here is not true. Catheter extraction is painful to almost everyone. While it’s inside you most likely won’t feel it, that’s true. - for femur just go general with a doctor who doesn’t take ages and won’t need a catheter. Paley for example also doesn’t use one for femur because it’s a quicker surgery).
In hindsight I still was glad I didn‘t have one. The dangers of not having one for even longer is urine dripping back to the kidneys and irreversibly damaging them.
I was at the upper limit of not having to have a catheter. Tibia would take 4h+ and there I would have had one during the surgery.
Poop on the other hand is much less dangerous and much less urgent. It‘s normal to not have bowel movement for a few days. Some patients need laxatives after 3-5 days but for me it just came back normally after 3 or 4 days. No problem.