My First Foley

Notes from a Caregiver

The U.S. Bureau of Statistics says there are 37.1 million unpaid caregivers in the U.S. I’m one of them. It’s been nearly three years since my husband Ray nearly died from sepsis. The seemingly unending challenges, steep learning curve and isolation I face in caring for him have inspired me to reach out to caregivers, these few days after the election.

I’ll be sharing my on-site experiences with you in the hope that other caregivers will relate and hopefully share theirs. For instance, how do you learn and retain how to drain a Foly catheter as you’re leaving the hospital, your husband barely able to speak and a three-hour drive ahead of you? You don’t.

Half way home I saw that the Foly tube wasn’t draining. There was no urine in the drainage bag. When we left the hospital I had been given a bottle of sterile saline, syringes and a pat on the back. We live in rural, remote northern California and there is no cell service for hundreds of miles. The nearest hospital was 20 miles back, and I was concentrating on getting home.

“I have to do something,” so I pulled over just north of the Litchfield wild horse corrals, got out the bag of hospital supplies, found a syringe, opened the bottle of sterile saline and filled the syringe. I knew how to handle a syringe from treating my horses for colic. But then, “What did the nurse say?” do I push the saline up the tube and leave it there, or do I push it in then pull the plunger back and return it to the syringe?

Now I know I could have called 911 and they would have helped me, but this was my first rodeo.

I’ll be posting my experiences and sharing information about the millions of unpaid caregivers in our country weekly. I welcome you to Kidney Failure x 2 and look forward to your comments and support.