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No one plans to have a life where you can rank the quality of international urology departments at spinal hospitals, but here I am to save you all from doing it. Trigger warning for my lack of shame discussing nerve damage effects on my bladder.

Truth be told, while I’d come to love my favourite nap of the year in Switzerland, I really didn’t love the whole procedure I had to go through – especially that one year they didn’t give me enough drugs and I thew up on a nurse (entirely my fault for forgetting to fast).

Well, when I got the letter about my urodynamic, I prepared myself for an upgrade to do the whole process in English. Also, a week in advance, a nice nurse called me and told me that if the test showed the need for botox, they’d just do it right then and there which was a huge bonus. I’m due for botox according to my Swiss schedule. I also was overdue for some antibiotics which are a necessary evil annually in my life.

I got a week long course of amoxicillin which isn’t the worst, and a few infection symptoms lessened before my big appointment on Monday. My friend Hannah dropped me off, and my friend Christy was lined up to pick me up several hours later because my expectation was to get the botox and have to sleep off the drugs. I didn’t know exactly how long it would be though, and I didn’t know the start process, so I brought an e-book on my ipad and showed up half an hour early. Then I sat in the waiting area of the hospital for an hour and twenty minutes waiting for someone to escort me to the next station. I finished the book.

An hour into my wait, a woman did come tell me they’d be ready for me in about twenty minutes… which I guess was polite. Once they did escort me to the next room, I felt a little rushed, but the nurses were super kind. One of them was having a particularly bad day, and as they asked me questions about my life in Germany and choice to move to New Zealand, I offered some kind words to the apologetic nurse who kept messing up the hookup of the measurement devices. Since I’m used to everything happening on a fixed bed with stirrups, I wasn’t sure what was happening when. They eventually wheeled me into another space and the stressed nurse introduced me to a couple other attendants and a urologist. I don’t know everyone’s role in the room – I was a bit unclear on why there were so many people, to be honest.

In REHAB Basel, there are two nurses who run the whole show with me cracking jokes while they put my feet in stirrups and strap uncomfortable devices in uncomfortable places, empty my bladder, and line up the x-ray over my stomach before taking photos of my pelvis which I can now recognise by sight because of the tiny jagged edge in the upper left of the base. I could pick my pelvic x-ray out of a line up, and this is a very special skill I’m weirdly proud of.

At this appointment on Monday, I could see my x-ray on a screen off to the left rather than two shots of it on the right. My bladder was full in the first shot an the hectic room had commands to begin loading up the saline solution.

“Aren’t you going to empty my bladder first?” I asked after they’d rapid fired a few questions to me about my sensation.

“Oh, is it full? Do you feel it? Did they not empty it?” These were questions that came rather late in my experience of this particular test.

It was well over 400 ml which was apparently shocking. The urologist then asked me about the input/output log I’d taken and barely scanned it after I explained my calibration system for measuring that I’d developed to reduce stress and mess.

“You didn’t use a jug?”

Dude, have you ever tried to measure your own output while self cathetering? It’s not easy, and it’s definitely not clean.

Then they added 400 ml to my bladder and had me cough. When no reaction came immediately, they drained it, told me it looked healthy and started to wrap up their work. This was a bit alarming to me because the urologist then began to tell me that while I’d been getting 12-18 month treatments, bladders change and because there was no spasms on their test, he wasn’t comfortable giving me botox at this stage. “Bladders shouldn’t hold more than 400 ml, so maybe you just need to catheter more frequently if your bladder is spasming when it’s more full than that.”

Sir, you didn’t even read my log; I have not had output much higher than 300 ml at my current spasm and incontinence levels.

No one even tapped my tummy.

This is the most annoying but important part of the test according to the Swiss nurses. Once my bladder is filled, they artificially create movement scenarios to test the bladder reaction. They literally just tap my tummy once they’ve filled my bladder and record the massive spasm reactions which indicate the need for botox.

I’ve not studied urology, but I’ve lived for ten years with nerve damage and a fluctuating quality of life related to it. Anyone tracking my stories knows the quality of life is all surrounding the bathroom stuff. I could live complaint free (or at least a 99% reduction in complaints) lifestyle in a wheelchair if I didn’t have to deal with this end of things.

The urologist told me they’d schedule a phone appointment with me in three months to see if I had any ongoing symptoms and that I needed to buy a jug for a more accurate output log. I politely agreed and was whisked out of the room with the tubes pulled out of me. A kind nurse helped me as I put my pants and shoes back on and transferred back to my chair. I told her how grateful I am to be in New Zealand where I have access to this affordable care – and I truly, truly am. The whole appointment was only like 20 minutes though, and I was out of there before I realised they hadn’t really given me a chance to ask some of my questions about my current and future situation based on the change of hospital system.

Huge plus that the whole thing was in English, but I was also just not aware of what was missing until it was all over and I was back in the waiting room within about half an hour. Christy wasn’t even ready to come get me for another hour because I thought it’d take a whole lot longer (I one hundred percent expected to receive the botox because I have been living with the conditions that the Swiss care indicated merited it). I also learned that they’ll do botox with a local anesthetic instead of a general, so I’ll never get my favourite nap again. That’s a less relevant detail for this experience, but I was thinking about it in the overall reflection of my two experiences.

One huge plus on both sides is the people who are in this field – in my experience across countries now – are all incredibly kind and sensitive to the situation. Despite the fact that we’re dealing with private business, they are all high class conscientious people, and I’m incredibly grateful for how they preserve my dignity in the rather undignified affair. I may have some preferences and opinions now on which system I think offers me the better quality of life or cares for my out of hospital experience more, but my biggest takeaway is that I want to see God heal me miraculously in the next three months so that I can have that phone call and explain why I won’t need to go back for that procedure again.

Why now? Why not.

One of the things I left off the last two posts was that the night we prayed for healings in our “mini big top,” one girl was healed of a migraine she’d had for several hours. That night another girl who’d come to youth group on crutches was healed of a leg injury. She showed up last Friday without crutches and told me that she’d woken up the previous Saturday completely healed and able to run and jump and play sports. Something really cool is happening here, and I get to be a part of it. Every prayer matters as God invites people to join in – you can be a part of this awesome work of the Holy Spirit too. I’m asking God for everything.