Reaming the urethra
A mate of mine, Johnny, was in hellish pain when he went to have a pee one day. He was almost doubled up by it, and very little urine was coming out. Seeing as he works as a chef in a hospital he proceeded upstairs to be seen by a medical professional.

The rather nice lady doctor suspected (correctly as it turns out) that he had kidney or bladder stones, so asked him to remove his undergarments so she could take a look. "I'm going to have to handle your penis", she said. "On you go, lass - do whatever you like to it", replied Johnny, hoping for an end to the agony.

The diagnosis was confirmed. He had a blockage, most likely a kidney stone which had now passed to the bladder, so the immediate course of action was catheterisation. A plastic tube was stuck up his Jap's eye, which dislodged the offending stone, and allowed the backlog of piss to emerge. Instant relief.

So far so good. But Johnny had to have some sort of treatment (ultrasound, maybe? Im not a medic so I don't know) to break up the stone so it could be passed. This is not necessarily a rapid process, so the catheter was in place for a number of days.

It turns out that urinary catheters build up ureic encrustations on the bit that protrudes into the bladder. This means that after it's been there a while, a lump of scaly, crusty essence-of-piss forms on the end of it...and the catheter is then extracted down the same way that it went in.

He said that having it removed was more painful than the bladder stone itself. However, there was one side benefit: after he'd had his urethra reamed out by this lump of rough mineral, he found he spent much less time pissing, as the bore seemed to have increased markedly!
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 4 Aug 2010, 12:00, 2 replies)

Oh yeah...
...had a urinary catheter in during my stay in ICU last year. The thought of the pain when they removed it still makes me shudder.
And strangely ever since then my pee doesn't come out straight - it kind of streams out to the right.
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Wed 4 Aug 2010, 15:57, closed)

I work with the elderly
and some love to yank out their catheters. Makes me cringe!
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Wed 4 Aug 2010, 17:20, closed)