Brown stuff?

[exch915]

Hubby has an indwelling foley and lately has been getting brown gunk on the tube coming out of the penis. He can't clean himself it so I've been using soap and water and it comes off but I'm not sure what's causing this. Is this normal? The home health nurse who visits him says it's a urine crystallization problem and he should drink cranberry juice.

[Donno]

As I recall, when I was in the hospital for 4 months 7 years ago that my foley started oozing brownish gunk after a couple of weeks. You may want to change it when it starts doing this. As I recall, when they changed mine, they put in one or two hundred CCs of saline first and let it flush out the urethra as they pulled the old foley out.

[crags]

the penis and surrounding area and foley should be washed 2x/day with soap/water to keep colonisation count down. push head of penis back to wash in a bit on the foley as well. i used to used a betadine pad on the clean foley after washing before rinsing off.

discharge is mostly dead white cells as a result of foley irritation, immune response to colonisation.

[SCI-Nurse]

You should drink more water, change catheter and send urine specimen.
CWO

[exch915]

Will do. Thanks.