I think the euphoria just to wake up postop rapidly disappears when the anesthetic drugs and local wear off...with a vengeance. 

Biggest miscalculation was not sticking around UCLA an extra day just in case I needed something. 

Of course, problems always seem to happen with  physician patients. I didn’t disappoint. 

By the time we got the rental car and crawled down the 405 to Newport Coast, I was beyond ready to lie down. The extra 3 hours of waiting to get our condo was too much. Turns out, my catheter was blocked and the pressure was building up. Picture the scene in Monty Python’s “Meaning of Life” when Mr. Creosote eats one last dessert wafer and explodes. Worse still, drug stores don’t carry catheter supplies or irrigation saline and Orange County medical supply stores all close by 5 pm. Luckily, there was one CVS that had an irrigation syringe. I boiled water, cooled it in the freezer and managed to flush it out and get it draining again. A bush fix is as good as any of it works! No way I could have tolerated the 60 miles of LA freeway back to UCLA each way and I know how useless a trip to the local ER would have been.