Friday, January 19, 2007
UTI's, Depends, and Sundry Other Details
Today has been such a blast - I managed to get the third-of-my-life urinary tract infection, or to those of you blessed enough to be familiar with them, a UTI. Since Tuesday I've been wondering what the heck is going on. I'd think I had it, then, no, its better. Oh, my bad - it's back. I'd made a trip to the store, and bought cranberry juice out the wazoo. Wednesday was really fun - We were at a praise concert at our church. I got up and left, but didn't make it. I literally wet my pants, only somewhat thank the Lord!, in the middle of the lobby of our church during a concert; a fun, new experience for me. I'm just used to more than 15 seconds notice that you need to find a little girl's room... I told Don - something is W.R.O.N.G.! (When I told him why I'd left, and never returned, he gave me one of those looks that made me think I'd grown little antennas on the top of my head.) So I decided, instead of buying stock in Depends which was my other choice, to go to the doctor Thursday. Explain to him I'm not really in the habit of wetting said pants in said lobby of public buildings.
But it seemed better Thursday. I thought, well maybe my bladder just temporarily fell apart overnight. Maybe I don't have a UTI. Maybe you just go from functioning, good muscle tone bladders to not so slick ones. Maybe I can't go out in public anymore. Gee, that'll be handy. Really, this aging stuff can be scary. Maybe you just fall apart one function at a time.
Plus I couldn't stand the thought of leaving my house. I'd just come up with a new schedule for the bookstore, where I take Thursday and Friday off; this was the first Thursday. I was giddy over being home; I couldnt stand the thought of leaving to drive to the doctor. So I convinced myself it was fine. Really, I'm fine.
It was snowing when I woke up, just enough to make dealing with the streets fun. It snowed off and on the entire day, which our multi-layers-of-hair dog, Elway, loved. Me, not so much. I just have skin and a light coating of downy fuzz, so I'm not so crazy about it. I like it on Christmas cards. Not sidewalks. Not driveways. Not cars. Not streets. And not when you have to go tinkle every 5 minutes.
I'm thankful we have 99 gazillion snow plows to clear our streets, and put down that nice, salty spray. Because this morning I had to snap out of denial; my UTI is definitely a UTI - nice bright red blood confirmed my suspicions. So I called the doctor. The doctor who used to have his office near our home, but decided to move north, toward all the downtown hospitals. We'd been there twice last week for other varieties of falling apart. I didn't really miss my doctor yet. When I phoned, I told them I'd really appreciate a prescription without coming in if at all possible (assuming he didn't miss us yet either, and likely had plenty of runny-nose, hacky-cough people in his office keeping him company) and the nice bright red blood had me pretty sure what it was. Thank goodness he agreed. I bundled up, drove to the store in the fun snow and got my 6 pills for $3.50 prescription plus weight watchers pizza for dinner - which I adore - and cat litter - just the essentials.
I came home, immediately popped one of the pills into my mouth, and isn't it amazing how little it takes to fix you sometimes?A bit scary if you think about it too long. That one pill can have such an effect on you. Feeling less like I'm a wreck, I decided to deal with our finances. But you can't pay the bills til you balance the checkbook. I'd skipped a month while the kids were home since payday was two days before Christmas and it was a wee bit crazy then. (Note to self: next year, skip balancing said checkbook ANY month except December when you have more transactions in one month than in the other eleven combined.) Makes it more interesting that way. So I check off the 99 gazillion transactions, in pink highlighter, then find I'm $240 off - and the bank is saying I have it and my checkbook doesn't and when the heck does that ever happen? So I get the fun task of going through again, marking every single entry with a blue highlighter. Such fun - the checkbook looks like an invitation to a baby shower, where you don't know if it's a boy or a girl. Guess what, the bank was right and Id entered some christmas shopping twice, which is really nice, except that it took THE ENTIRE EVENING to find the three errors. Three errors. Its 9 p.m. I'm going to go cook my WW pizza, put on pjs, take another pill and call it a day. A real blast it was.
On the upside, the bleeding has stopped and I dont have to go the potty every 5 minutes anymore, which will hopefully make getting something else done besides visiting the bathroom and checking off duplicate christmas shopping entries in pastel markers, more likely tomorrow. Maybe I'll go wild and clean the catbox. Don't hate me - I just know how to have fun.
But it seemed better Thursday. I thought, well maybe my bladder just temporarily fell apart overnight. Maybe I don't have a UTI. Maybe you just go from functioning, good muscle tone bladders to not so slick ones. Maybe I can't go out in public anymore. Gee, that'll be handy. Really, this aging stuff can be scary. Maybe you just fall apart one function at a time.
Plus I couldn't stand the thought of leaving my house. I'd just come up with a new schedule for the bookstore, where I take Thursday and Friday off; this was the first Thursday. I was giddy over being home; I couldnt stand the thought of leaving to drive to the doctor. So I convinced myself it was fine. Really, I'm fine.
It was snowing when I woke up, just enough to make dealing with the streets fun. It snowed off and on the entire day, which our multi-layers-of-hair dog, Elway, loved. Me, not so much. I just have skin and a light coating of downy fuzz, so I'm not so crazy about it. I like it on Christmas cards. Not sidewalks. Not driveways. Not cars. Not streets. And not when you have to go tinkle every 5 minutes.
I'm thankful we have 99 gazillion snow plows to clear our streets, and put down that nice, salty spray. Because this morning I had to snap out of denial; my UTI is definitely a UTI - nice bright red blood confirmed my suspicions. So I called the doctor. The doctor who used to have his office near our home, but decided to move north, toward all the downtown hospitals. We'd been there twice last week for other varieties of falling apart. I didn't really miss my doctor yet. When I phoned, I told them I'd really appreciate a prescription without coming in if at all possible (assuming he didn't miss us yet either, and likely had plenty of runny-nose, hacky-cough people in his office keeping him company) and the nice bright red blood had me pretty sure what it was. Thank goodness he agreed. I bundled up, drove to the store in the fun snow and got my 6 pills for $3.50 prescription plus weight watchers pizza for dinner - which I adore - and cat litter - just the essentials.
I came home, immediately popped one of the pills into my mouth, and isn't it amazing how little it takes to fix you sometimes?A bit scary if you think about it too long. That one pill can have such an effect on you. Feeling less like I'm a wreck, I decided to deal with our finances. But you can't pay the bills til you balance the checkbook. I'd skipped a month while the kids were home since payday was two days before Christmas and it was a wee bit crazy then. (Note to self: next year, skip balancing said checkbook ANY month except December when you have more transactions in one month than in the other eleven combined.) Makes it more interesting that way. So I check off the 99 gazillion transactions, in pink highlighter, then find I'm $240 off - and the bank is saying I have it and my checkbook doesn't and when the heck does that ever happen? So I get the fun task of going through again, marking every single entry with a blue highlighter. Such fun - the checkbook looks like an invitation to a baby shower, where you don't know if it's a boy or a girl. Guess what, the bank was right and Id entered some christmas shopping twice, which is really nice, except that it took THE ENTIRE EVENING to find the three errors. Three errors. Its 9 p.m. I'm going to go cook my WW pizza, put on pjs, take another pill and call it a day. A real blast it was.
On the upside, the bleeding has stopped and I dont have to go the potty every 5 minutes anymore, which will hopefully make getting something else done besides visiting the bathroom and checking off duplicate christmas shopping entries in pastel markers, more likely tomorrow. Maybe I'll go wild and clean the catbox. Don't hate me - I just know how to have fun.
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