Posted by Andrew on 31/5/2011, 6:31 pm, in reply to "CBT and catheters"

Hi Rob First well done for sorting yourself out with a catheter for emergencies. As for splitting the bladder. I believe there is no chance of that happening. The pain of an overful bladder would result in you taking some desperate action to empty it. I believe the muscle wall of the bladder may get stretched and lose some of its tone i.e. it subsequently generates less pressure when peeing. In your case, now you have catheters to hand, your illogical fear now becomes irrelevant. In terms of time we have heard of cases of international flights where the door to door time was as much as 14 hours. Painful, very: but survivable. While we are on this, for the benefit of those without a catheter, there is a medical term "urinary retention". Usually this would occur for a physical reason, due to some obstruction. The medical profession take urinary retention very seriously and would treat it as an emergency. When you get caught out, rather than face the embarrassment of having to mention shy bladder, you could just describe the symptom, rather than the cause, i.e. urinary retention, and ask for time and space to deal with it. Andrew

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