Female Catheter insertion

Ladies, what experience do you have with urethral catheters being used or inserted during exams or operations, or post-op recovery? What type of surgeries have catheters been used on you? How old were you at the time(s)? Has anyone ever awoken to find a catheter in your vagina that wasn't there when you went to sleep?

Catheters do not go in the vagina they go in the third hole down there, the urethra.

I've only had them for things like epidural and when I had a hip arthroscopy.

I have never luckily never required insertion of a Catheter, and part of me hopes it never will happen, however, if it does I'll take it in strides, apparently it's not as bad as I may think.

I had a cathater placed, but fortunately, it was done after I was under anesthesia. It felt a little odd when I walked around, if I didn't keep the tubing in the same position.

Taking it out was only slightly uncomfortable, not bad at all.

Unfortunately, I didn't pee for quite awhile after the removed it and they told me if I didn't urinate soon, they'd have to replace it (they did an ultrasound to see if there was actually urine in my bladder, which there was). It was getting down to the deadline for when they were going to re-cath me and one nurse told me to stand at the sink, turn on the water and watch the water run. I swear, within 15 seconds I had to pee like a race horse. I was so greatful to her 😃. I hear looking into a fire does the same for some people. I don't think they'd have allowed me to build a bone fire in the hospital.

I understand all parts of it, insertion, having it in there and removal are quite a bit more uncomfortable for men. One of the few medical procedures worse for men than women.

I don't do uretheral play, so it was strickly medical for me.

Interesting trivia: women don't have a urethra; they have a urethral opening. The urethra refers to the lumen in the penis.

But we all call it a urethra.

As far as awakening with the catheter in me, it didn't bother or surprise me, but for all the pre-op education they did, they never told me I'd wake up with a catheter in me, or that they'd shave me.

Zika just to inform you that you are mistaken about female not having a urethra, this is incorrect.

The female urethra is a relatively simple tubular structure that has the sole purpose of conducting urine from the bladder to the outside of the body. It is a short structure without complex investing structures; thus, it is less prone to intrinsic pathology than the male urethra is.

The female urethra is quite a bit shorter than its male counterpart (4cm in females compared to 20 cm in males ) and its opening is situated between a woman's clitoris and vagina, the urinary meatus.

Probing a woman is very simple because her urethra is short and straight, but that's why you should have a lot of hygiene to prevent infections that come from the vaginal opening

I have never used an actual catheter but have used a soft plastic tube for fun and games. To avoid any infection I always drink lots of water and pee frequently afterward to flush any bacteria.

Drinking lots of cranberry juice or taking cranberry pills , can also help , but as Amy K said:

To avoid any infection I always drink lots of water and pee frequently afterwards to flush any bacteria.

Flushing the bladder by peeing does help to reduce the risk , also making sure you empty the bladder fully is vital.

As with all insertions into the urethra being as clean and aseptic will reduce the risk of a UTI significantly .

When I was 22 I had my tubes tied (big mistake) when they knocked me out for it there wasn’t a catheter in me and then when I woke up from it there was and I had to wait for them to take it out. Other than that I’ve only had them when I got epidurals and one time during an ultrasound while I was pregnant. Currently my husband and I are in the process of doing IVF and during the egg retrieval my doctor said I would get a catheter.

My former wife had major surgery many years ago and she had been cathed in the operating room. Several days after surgery the catheter was removed, but she was not yet ready to pass urine on her own. It was the middle of the afternoon and she was in increasing pain. She called for the nurse, but the Aide say they were in shift change. About 15 minutes later, she rang for the nurse again.... and again, the Aide came and said the nurses were in shift change. We tried a third time about 10 minutes later and when the Aide showed up, I demanded that she bring me a cath kit.

I hadn't inserted a cath in a hospital for 30 years, but my wife said to go ahead. I quickly put on gloves, cleaned the area, lubed the catheter, and I had the catheter inserted, as I heard many people running down the hall. As three nurses burst into the room, my wife had voided over 800 ml. The head nurse decided to inflate the balloon and leave the foley in place. The next day, none of those nurses were back on the floor. Neither of us heard anything further about what I had done.

My first delivery was super difficult. I tore pretty seriously and had so much bruising/swelling my (now ex) husband had to cath me for about a week so I could go.

We were very poor but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid so we were a charity case. Substandard care to put it mildly

@srg_rik That's similar to what happened to my [ex-]wife...

She was in the hospital for back surgery -- a laminectomy, so nothing too major but still debilitating. IIRC the surgery was in the morning, and she had already been moved out of recovery to her room. However, by around dinner time, she still hadn't peed. She complained to me about it saying how uncomfortable and almost painful it was, but we agreed to wait until the nurse or doctor came by and we could ask about it then.

Fast forward to an hour later, still no pee, still no doctor or nurse. By this point she was in actual pain. I didn't know much about it, but I figured that if a bladder was full and kept getting fuller, it would burst or something terrible, and this pain was the body's way of telling us to hurry up. So I went and hunted down a nurse who came in to insert a catheter and solve the problem, when my more-observant wife asks, "Is that latex?" The nurse looks up. She looks at the catheter. Turns around, looks at the [BIG] sign on the door that says "Latex Allergy - no latex products to be used in this room", and finally nods. I was absolutely infuriated -- this seemed like such an obvious thing, to have it ignored was totally unacceptable to me.

She goes off to find a non-latex catheter. 2 minutes pass. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. In tears, my wife asks me to find out what's taking so long. I go out and find the nurse looking through cabinets but said she couldn't find a non-latex catheter. This was 2000, in downtown Chicago -- I felt like we were in the 3rd world trying to scrounge up supplies!

I thought getting mad and indignant might get her moving, or at least scared enough to go find someone competent. Nope. At one point she came in with some generic clear, plastic tubing saying "This is all I could find!" It didn't even have a rounded tip! It was like someone took some IV tubing and sliced it with a swiss army knife and suggested shoving that blunt/sharp end into my wife's urethra. I was not amused.

----

Eventually they found a non-latex catheter, the problem was solved (well over 1L but I don't remember the actual quantity), but to this day I still don't understand how the problem got so bad. When I went hunting for a doctor, it was like I was in a bad horror movie where everyone had just been taken -- there was no one around besides the station nurse who was unsuccessfully hunting for a catheter. Crazy.

@glfin this was at Cook County hospital in 1950, right. Just joking... I can’t believe that a major hospital in a major city would be that poorly staffed. Frankly in Chicago, I wouldn’t go anywhere except University of Chicago hospitals. I am just happy it all turned out well for her at that time.