Pee body

When Delia was a baby I liked to call her Peabody when she had a wet diaper. Come here ya little Peabody, I'd say. Once, when she was suffering from some weird throwing up problem (her only real illness aside from a few snotty head colds) I got to use a little stick-on external catheter to try to get a teeny, tiny urine sample from her. The throwing up problem went away a couple of days later, but I'll treasure that memory forever... NOT.

Anyway, you might be asking yourself, "I wonder what this might be leading up to?"

Well, today I signed off on my final skill for this term. Inserting a Foley catheter.

Those of you who are super fortunate may not realize that when you are very ill, have lengthy surgery, break your entire pelvis, whatever, those evil people at the hospital will stick a hose into your whatnot for the purpose of letting you pee into a bag. Pray that this never happens to you, if only to avoid the off chance that some ham-handed nursing student will get a shot at "practicing their skills" on your bits and pieces.

For the purposes of lab practice, we use anatomically correct manikins. They feature interchangeable personal regions. So, Mr. Ken Dahl might become Ms. Anastasia Beaverhausen (my personal favorite made up name which I totally stole from Will & Grace) with a brisk riiiiiiiiiiiiiip of velcro. Both genders feature simplified, large-bore openings so that the hapless moron student can get an idea of what they're up against come the revolution. The visual on this can be, trust me, a bit disturbing the first time, but after a bit we all become accustomed to the "squishy bits" looking (in the case of the male manikin part) somewhat realistic in a rubbery way, but with a gigantic opening at the end, or (in the case of the female manikin part) gapingly horrifying and with perfectly round openings in appropriate places. You can get used to anything, it seems.

At any rate, this skill is due by next Tuesday, so like good little students the smarter ones among us (and here I include myself, modestly) have taken care of this early. The lab does get lousy with students toward a deadline and the lab instructors are less than sympathetic to our cries and pleas. They shut the lab promptly and go home with clear consciences. We were given these deadlines the first week of the term.

Three more module tests, the head to toe, and two finals. Go us!