h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I heard a story today (which almost certainly means it ain't true, but benefit of the doubt and all that) about a bloke stuck in the M11 blizzard last year in the UK. Apparently he was there for many hours (6 or more I think) and decided it was beneath his dignity to go for a wee outside. So he held it in, causing his bladder to rupture and ending up with quite a long period of hospital stay.

Now personally, I doubt anyone has that much control. But is it possible d'ya think?

there are different ways of holding it: he may have used a rubber band.

i would have thought that kidney failiure was mre likely, though

Or a pre existing weakness in the bladder wall?

I was quite intrigued to discover that the urge to go is triggered when the bladder still has considerable capacity to spare. Hence those times when it feels desperate & yet not much comes out & other times when you think you're never going to finish

I remember my biology teacher saying that the bladder has a certain "maximum capacity", and when that is reached you simply lose voluntary control of the sphincter and wet yourself.

If thats true then perhaps he WAS using a rubber band, the pee couldnt go anywhere and so his bladder ruptured?

Isn't it that men with enlarged prostates sometimes find it hard to pee, and the longer they leave it the more difficult it gets because the pressure of the bladder on the swollen prostate 'squeezes' the urethra even tighter shut? It could be that he'd held it for so long he'd accidentally closed his own bladder altogether. An elderly friend of the family had such a swollen prostate that they couldn't even catheterize him and had to put a tube through his abdominal wall to drain his bladder, though in his case the main danger was the urine backing up into his kidneys and damaging them.

Anyone here remember the semi-final of the Japanes game show Endurance when the three contestants had to drink a lot of water and then not go?
The loser was the one who peed first. I think I nearly wet meself watching it
They were certainly in pain...

Didn't something like that supposedly kill Tycho Brahe--bladder rupture because he held it in too long at a dinner party?

When men can't pee because of an enlarged prostate they don't tend to get a ruptured bladder: the urine backs up and ends up in the kidney sso they sometimes get renal failure, but they don't often get a ruptured bladder.

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Sounds like routine procedure for a uterine ultrasound . . .


az

...or the time my appendix burst, and my body was trying desperately to evacuate everything, but they had me drink CAT scan imaging fluid AND gave me an enema of the stuff.

Do you know how hard it is to drink something when there is a tear in your digestive system?

Nope.

Thank goodness.


az