| Hey there! I began to get sediment and sludge in my catheter about 10 years after my injury. The first time it happened I had not a clue as to what was happening since it had never happened before. I was working then [shortly after beginning working] and was at a conference in Albany, New
York. This was almost 3 hours away from home. Just great! That night at the hotel... I was with my ex-husband and I began to get the funny feelings that I get when my catheter is not draining. He checked everything and everything looked okay but my symptoms only got worse. So there I was, out of town and at about 11 p.m. at night, and had to make the trip to the ER to have the catheter changed which resolved my symptoms. After that, I was building up huge amounts of thick sediment/sludge and it happened pretty much overnight. We found that we had to irrigate it whenever I began to get the feelings that it was not draining before it did leak all over the place. Most often we caught it in time but,
a lot of the time, the irrigation would not work because it was so plugged so we had to change the catheter right then and there. At that point in time in my life my ex-husband was changing my catheter as needed. I had done absolutely nothing different up to that point so I do not know what triggered it. In any event, it does not matter what triggered it... only that it made my life more difficult. I was lucky it never happened at work. Advice? I never found anything that really worked including cranberry pills, etc.. I remember finally going to a urologist in Syracuse New York after some time and he suggested going from an 18 French catheter size to a 20 French catheter size. So I did. However, I was accumulating so much sediment that that did not help either. We
just had to keep making sure [through irrigations] that the catheter remained unobstructed. On the positive side, during all the time that I had sludge [from about 1990 two the year 2000] I never had a single UTI! In the year 2000 my current husband and I had moved to Virginia. All of a sudden my sludge and sediment began to dissipate and pretty much disappear. I had always drank purified water and tap water so I could not pinpoint precisely if that had anything to do with it. However, it disappeared with a price... I began to get UTI's. Go figure! I think stones were beginning to form and they were ultimately causing ongoing UTI's for numerous years. By the time I really got checked out in October of last year... I
had very numerous large bladder stones and those are the ones that I just had removed in May. Your problem may or may not be bladder stones but it cannot hurt to have a CT scan to rule them out. Otherwise, continually keeping the catheter clear by irrigating with a vinegar/water solution is the next option. Nothing else helped me keep it clear. Lori C4/5 complete, almost 27 years post
Tucson, Arizona [a native of upstate New York however]
-------Original Message------- Date: 9/13/2006 4:40:51 PM Subject: [QUAD-L] The sediment in my urine Hello everyone,
I need your help. For the past two years I have suffered from alot of sediment in my urine. I have tried flushing the Foley, taking tablets of vitamin C, cut out calcium and have drunk lots of water but my problem still persists.
My Foley has clogged more times than I can count and I am tired of being soaked with urine. Is there any advice or suggestions any of you could offer me such as diets, drugs or anything that has benefited any of you with similar problems. I would be most appreciative.
Thanks
Dillon | 
