Many years ago I had a surgery that required me to be catheterized. It all went well, and the time came for the catheter to be removed. The nurse came in and turned out to be a girl I had gone to high school with. She was surprised as well, and after we chatted and caught up she quickly and efficiently removed the catheter. The main thing I remember was how much of it she had to pull out…but neither of us was embarrassed, and I haven’t seen her since.

I haven’t thought about this in years. I wonder if she ever does.

I refused to have my catheter taken out the day after surgery from a nurse with two “assistants”. I told the 2 spectators they had to leave. And no they were not in training or students. I later received an apology and an admission that one was just there to avoid doing something else she didn’t want to do. In essence she was hiding from her supervisor at my expense of further humiliation and me serving as her entertainment.

Following surgery requiring urinary catheterisation. The catheter was removes at 6 am Saturday. By midday I was busting to go but could not. I informed the nursing staff who told me the doctor had been informed. by 6pm I was in distress, the nursing staff told me the doctor would come as soon as possible but there was only one doctor in the hospital who was in the emergency department. I was in agony the whole night. I would have been happy for anyone of any gender to insert a catheter. It was 6 am Sunday when the doctor finally arrived. I would have no qualms at all about a female nurse installing a urinary catheter.

In my girlfriend’s urology department, it happens quite often that male Muslim patients refuse female nurses or one of the female doctors to install a catheter, change bandages or medically examine them. They explicitly ask for the one male urologist, as he is the only one who may see, and touch their genitals.

Not all male Muslim patients make such demands, by the way — only the fanatic ones.

One interesting variation happened not so long ago, when a nurse was forbidden by her own Muslim boyfriend to see, touch or manipulate the genitals of any male patient every which way. This was obviously an outrageous demand, since he basically forbade her to do an essential part of her job. (She was allowed to clean the beds, though.)

Luckily, this nurse was a strong progressive woman, and strongly supported by the urologist team and the entire staff, she understood fairly quickly that this menacing maniac Muslim man had to be ditched, and rather sooner than later.

And thereupon, she stopped touching his genitals as well.