The internet connection on the bottom floor of the rec is a bit spotty. When I enter the bathroom, there's a good chance that at some point the music I'm streaming will cut out. Well, sure enough, right before I'm about to stand up, a dramatic silence falls upon my ears. About then my urine feels slightly warmer than normal. Which is incredibly weird in and of itself, since how would any one bodily fluid feel warmer than another? I look down to investigate, and lo and behold, there is a faint red line running down the middle of the toilet bowl. "Well, crap." I attempt to force a few more drops out and direct them at the bowl, but I'm about dry, and only a couple fall. But they are certainly red. I debate taking a picture, but my mind about that is made up for me when the toilet automatically flushes. The battle has begun.
(If you want, I'll point some fun little euphemisms I threw in there. The well, "crap" was a bit gratuitous, but I was pretty proud of the "spotty" internet connection and the "streaming" music. Because, you know, my stream of urine was spotted with blood.)
Now, as with any adversarial confrontation, it is important to know thine enemy. Luckily, WebMD is a thing, and after a slightly awkward conversation with my parents, I am left hoping I have a urinary tract infection, since the alternative seems to be cancer. Oddly enough, I don't have any of the other symptoms WebMD is alerting me about. There was never any burning sensation, I haven't been going abnormally frequently, and I haven't had any difficulty going either. So I don't know what to think. A brief further consultation with the internet (using an incognito tab on my browser so nobody that steals my phone will know I've been researching UTI's, despite the fact that I'm obviously blogging about it and not hiding it at all) reveals I should drink some cranberry juice. Unless it's cancer. Then the cranberry juice probably won't help (probably won't hurt though).
I do that. I go to the store for the second time in two days after having not shopped for basically an entire month. I drink two quarts of cranberry juice in an hour. I don't like cranberries, so this is another pretty big concession on my part. The psychosomatics start to kick in. I feel sick to my stomach, though I felt fine literally every second up until I noticed blood coming out of my penis. I guess it's understandable for that sight to have that effect, but come on brain, you should know better. The fact that I have most of Mike Birbiglia's standup comedy routine memorized is coming back to haunt me. You see, he used to play a game with himself on long car trips (a regular occurrence for a person trying to make it starting out as a comedian). The game was a little competition with himself to see how clear he could get his urine. Then one day it came out bloody, and he lost that game pretty badly. Which is sad when it's a game against nobody. He had cancer, which is where the routine takes on a bit of a less funny tone for me recalling it in my current state. Don't worry though guys; I refuse to have cancer. That just wouldn't be cool.
Mike's routine goes on to talk about his subsequent prostate exam, surgery, and recovery. I'm a bit more concerned with the cancer question, but not that worried because bad things don't really happen to me. A repeating though in my head is "man, if I was going to get a UTI, you'd think I could at least have had sex or something..." And now that I have one, my chance of getting laid goes way down. Actually, that's not true. It's pretty hard to quantify a decrease from one near-zero number to another. I guess if you look at it as a percentage decrease, from, say, 1% to 0.005%, then my chances have diminished by a factor of 200, which is pretty severe. But my "lost opportunity damages" (I know all about those now; go law school) are negligent, so let's not focus on that either. All I know is, I'm going to beat this thing. Unless it requires a lot of work. Or more cranberry juice. Or cancer.
Thanks for reading!
(Update: My last trip to the bathroom was normal. I am unsure what to make of this. I had no symptoms, then I had one symptom, and it was a doozy. Now I'm back to none. Has anything changed? I guess we'll find out in part 2!)
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