I shall first explain what a catheter is and what it is used for. If for some reason a person cannot pass water then he has to use a catheter, why the hospitals prefer an indwelling one instead of an intermittent one I dont know maybe someone can tell me. The catheter goes into the bladder passing all the 'gates' on the way and the urine passes through it. One has to be trained to use it by a hospital nurse although after reading my posts you will know a lot more about it than a nurse will ever tell you. I cannot see the great difficulty in it and why it needs a special trained nurse and why not every doctor cannot do it. I must state that most of the catheters I have used only once, so I am an inexperienced user. I suppose most people reading this are or at least inexperienced in using a different catheter. It is possible that after using it more often I may come to a different conclusion. Most instructions are rather vague and dont seem to be written for someone like me, and the videos which I will quote are certainly not made by newcomers. Although all the videos make it sound easy that is not what I have found. I must emphasize that all the catheters work and do not hurt but I have no real way of knowing if all the urined comes out. One has to use the correct size a larger size may not fit in. I use a size 14 and one catheter which was written on it size 14 I suspect was really larger and therefore did not fit in. One has to hold it in, by holding the limb (I dont like using the correct word) tight and one wouldnt 'hold' so I suspect it was really less than 14, I cant think of any other reason. So one must basically use the largest size possible. I am not sure if one uses a smaller size, less urine will come out and it will not empty the bladder but I suspect this is the case. Catheters are not allowed to be touched by hand even after being washed which anyway one has to do, so they either have a slider on, or are covered with a plastic wrapping. The problem is, that since the catheter has to be very slippery to go in and up to the bladder one has to hold the slider very tight. Some are very small and and one can only use two fingers which makes it very difficult but others are longer and some a lot longer. One whose fingers are in order wont have any difficulty but not everyone's fingers are so dexterous, mine cant today peel a potato. So you push the catheter in holding the slider, then you have to push the slider back on the catheter before you push the next bit in. What happens then is that the catheter comes out again so it has to be held in by holding the limb tight. It has to go quite far in before one can do that, so one has to start with the slider about six inches from the end of the catheter before putting it in. This is quite far and unless the catheter is tapered like a nail at the end, can be quite difficult to get into the opening. One also sometimes has to lift the limb up and stretch it to be able to do it. There is one catheter which has a much better way of 'holding' it in. There is a cap with a rim shaped like a hat which fits onto the tip at the end in which the catheter only goes one way and you just have to hold the rim to the limb. Some catheters come with a bag with marks on of how much urine it contains, my experience is that they usually all contained about the same amount.Some are made with quite a hard plastic and since there are a lot of bends on the way to the bladder have to be pushed harder but they still go easily. The ones that are too soft and bend easily are much harder to put in six inches away so the best are something in between. Some come with a sachet of saline to flood the catheter before use. One cant use a knife to open the sachet because it is enclosed with the catheter. On the videos they just press the sachet and it opens, I found this very difficult even after using pliers, they just wouldnt open. It took me a long time to open them, maybe I need more experience. That is all for now I intend to write a post of each catheter of how I found it and my opinion of it. I hope also to link the video of each and the number of viewers and see if they increase!