Angie drove me to the Hartford Hospital emergency room on Friday, August 11 at 5:00 AM.

Based on an earlier ER visit, I told them that I was in a lot of pain, so we got attended to fairly quickly (it was uncomfortable - pee was building up in my bladder).We had warned the nurses that I required a smaller catheter (14) because of a stricture, but they knew better (sarcasm intended) and tried a medium catheter (16) with no luck and much to my discomfort. They then put in a 14 with better luck. We were back home by 7:30.

A day or so after that ER visit I developed a UTI (Urinary Tract Infection), probably to the multiple efforts to catheterize me  (unbeknownst to me at the time). The pee coming into the catheter looked like the river that Moses changed to blood in the movie "The Ten Commandments".  I got in touch with my urology doctor's office, and they thought it was due to radiation damage from 6 years ago together with having a catheter.

On August 15th I started leaking pee around the catheter, so I called the on call urologist. He instructed us to once again go to the emergency room. At least this time the pressure was being relieved by the leak. This visit was an exercise in futility. We got there at 10:00 PM, and waited for hours to get a room, then hours to be seen by a nurse. We went through the same routine about catheter size, but at least they used a 14 catheter. The only problem is that they removed the old one, cleaned it and put it back in.

One good thing that happened during that visit is that the doctor did a blood test and discovered that I did have a UTI. She got me on Keflex ASAP and that would cure the UTI over the next week or so.