This is going to be a heavily TMI post about bladder issues and unique challenges I am facing as a trans woman who has bladder problems. You have been warned, and this is your “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Eject now, for there will be no further warnings.
You’re still here? I must admit, I am surprised. If you aren’t fully up to date on what’s been happening, go visit this earlier post to catch up. Caught up? Good. I still haven’t had those other tests, but the first one is chasing a cause for a problem which has seemingly self resolved. I am no longer seeing blood in my underwear. I haven’t seen any for almost a week. I suspected all along that was likely a small kidney or bladder stone working its way through my system.
What blood I have seen since beginning catheter use is from self-inflicted injury. Even that hasn’t happened for the last three days. “Self-inflicted injury?” you ask. Yes, I have been injuring my urethra inserting the catheter. I have a significantly narrowed urethral opening. It’s a common poor outcome of circumcision of the penis. (Look I warned you this would be TMI. It’s your fault you’re still reading this.) The technical name of the condition is meatal stenosis.
[Aside: Knowing what I now know about circumcision, I highly discourage this barbaric procedure. I wish I had known enough 43+ years ago to not allow it to be done to my own son.]
As a result of this condition, it has taken me some time to learn how to insert a catheter without injuring myself and causing bleeding. I managed to do so for the last seven times I have inserted the catheter. That’s almost two days. Here’s where this starts to get complicated for me, as a transgender woman. I have only been able to do this successfully while standing and facing the toilet. That’s incredibly dysphoria inducing for me. It’s triggering me just writing this right now.
Not only that, it creates a significant danger for me in public. If I have to use the restroom in public, and I am out longer than six hours, that means using the restroom facing the toilet while standing. I cannot imagine that would go over well in the ladies room. But you’re in a stall, right? Yes. And the top of my head is likely visible from that stall. Even if not, my feet are facing the wrong direction.
And obviously, I am not going into the men’s room looking like I do. So, once again, years after I thought I had gotten past the issue of public restrooms, here I am again. Add to this the current trans panic being propagated by hateful “Christians” and Republicans, and I am starting to think that going out in public for more than a couple of hours is no longer an option.
There are technical issues trying to catheter seated. Cis women can do it easily. Cis women have a much shorter urethra and thus their catheter is shorter. It fits in the toilet seated. The catheter I have to use doesn’t fit.
Standard female length catheters average 7-10 inches. Anatomically, women have a much shorter urethra and can use a shorter, female length catheter. […]
Standard male length catheters average 15-18 inches. Men have a longer urethra and require a male length catheter because of this anatomical difference.
You can see my dilemma from that. I’m not a man, but my anatomy doesn’t match my gender. No toilet is going to accommodate a 15 inch catheter while seated. Believe me, I tried. Several times. It just doesn’t work. So I either avoid any situation that might cause me to be out over the six hours between catheter uses, or I skip the use on such an occasion. I’m leaning toward the latter option. Of course, doing that will impact my bladder health long term.
As you are no doubt aware, I do not yet have a diagnosis as to the cause of my atonic bladder. It’s entirely possible that it is the result of a problem with my autonomic nervous system. There are several possible causes, and I am doing my best not to assume the worst just yet. But I will freely admit I am struggling not to overreact to this situation. For now, the journey continues.
An Aging Trans Woman 
Of course, because I said the bleeding was under control, what happens? That’s right. More bleeding at this last time.
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I shouldn’t giggle here about this, and I’ve seen this term before and am familiar, but seriously. I gotta be me, and to see this term in relation to the subject, well. Some scientist somewhere has a quirky sense of humor! (meatal stenosis, which I know is not pronounced “meet-al.) I saw the other medical name for it, which I’ve also seen. As the mother of a son in the 90s, it was a thing about which to think in advance. But I giggled back then about meatal, too.
Along with cringing, as this makes me cringe for you. That said, I know your concerns with restrooms in public places are real, and would be things I’d think about for you, but also feel your health should come first, and it’s nobody’s business what you’re doing in there with your feet facing backward. I’ve never understood people looking, and I think a person has a fine basis upon which to lie, or at least not tell the truth or even part of it. You wouldn’t even have to lie-you could just challenge them on their impression that your feet faced the wrong way, then ask what’s wrong with them that they’d think they saw something like that, and would ask a stranger about it? “I think you are mistaken.” “And why would you even ask a stranger about something like that?”
I mean, none of us here would ask a person in a stall what they were doing. Wingnuts be nuts, and I think you can pull this off.
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Thank you Ali. You’re a sweetheart. Your quirky sense of humor is well placed in this case. I smiled despite myself. 😘
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I don’t know if it’s worse or better, but when I watched the in-hotel video of the truck explosion in LV, I started giggling when the fireworks sounds began. It was so National Lampoon’s Vacation movies! I know the driver perished, and there were injuries, and I’m totally sorry about the injuries, and for the driver’s loved ones’s loss, I truly am.
But those fireworks whistles …
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To be fair (to me,) I’d already read many of Musk’s comments about his truck and containment, and much of the other news about it, so in the light of the seriousness of the event, those fireworks noises were dissonant and made me giggle.
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