This past week, I took my 81 year old father to the urologist.
This started about a week ago, when he called me at 8:30 in the morning, telling me that he had spent the night in the bathroom, trying unsuccessfully to urinate. And now it was getting scary.
My husband went with him to the emergency room, where they installed a catheter. In not such a gentle way, my father told me. But the catheter, he reported, is cool, because he can sleep through the night now.
This was just the beginning of the TMI.
So I ended up taking him to the urologist, to have the catheter pulled.
Me–in a waiting room full of old duffers discussing their pee-pees and the various vagaries of them. It was like sitting in the barber shop in Hell.
The nurse took my Dad back, and he looked at me as if I had betrayed him when I remained seated, so I ended up heading back to the examining room. I couldn’t bring myself to go in as he disrobed, but was invited back in when he was “decent” again.
I walked in to find him sitting on the examining table with a giant paper napkin over his lap, his trousers around his ankles and his cap on.
I burst out laughing.
I won’t go into detail about the other events of that day, because they are not fit for human consumption. But I will say that it’s quite a shock to find your Dad in a doctor’s examining room, looking like that creepy old man from the bus station.
