Ryan versus UTI part one

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!)

That's it

I'm done. After a solid 11 hours of outlining yesterday leading into my four-hour contracts exam today, my last final is behind me. I must say, I do enjoy law school though. Even the tests are interesting. A couple people looked at me really strangely when I expressed that my torts exam was fun, so I held my tongue today, but at least I'm not dreading any of the future semesters. Of course, I have no idea what my grades will be, but there's nothing I can do about it now. So I'll watch some movies on my computer while bouncing cashews off my mouth to find in a month or so. (I did find the wasabi pea that went missing so long ago. It was under a laundry basket.) I also went shopping for the first time this month, so I have fruit and cashews. I didn't buy anything else, since I'll be back home and mooching in a couple days, but after eating only oatmeal for the past week (with an exception of a free bagel last Thursday and some pasta Monday), I'm more than satisfied with any flavor whatsoever. My cashews even say they're from Cedar Rapids, IA! I'm enthusiastic about everything. Don't worry; it won't last.

I don't really have anything to report from my hermitage. I've read over 2,000 pages of legal text in the past week preparing, and while it wasn't the worst experience of my life (because like I said, at least it's interesting), I don't think there's much that bears repeating. I'm also not allowed to share exam contents, so I can't really go into much at all about the last week. Except I played some handball on Thursday and Sunday. I might play tonight, but I'm feeling a bit too lazy to bike to downtown St. Paul (mostly because of the ride back in the dark). I set up a final match with Matt Hiber tomorrow in any event, so I'll be leaving Minnesota on a solid note.

I am playing in my first magic the gathering tournament in a long time on Saturday. I have no expectations as to my ability, but just being in that environment again will be quite an experience, I'm sure.

I forgot my tea in my bottle rack outside today. The bottle seems to have survived the freezing, but it was unfortunate in that I didn't have my tea during the test, and in that I still don' t have my tea on account of it being solid.

The maximum word count for my Constitutional law class was 2,500 words, which I hit almost exactly. I spent a decent amount of time thinking through the various aspects and paring down what I wanted to say, and I turned it in with three minutes remaining. I got lucky the printers I went to were working, since otherwise I probably wouldn't have made the 8-hour deadline. Then in my 4-hour torts exam I hit just over 4,500 words. I sort of petered off after three hours, since I wasn't desperately typing any more. But it turns out that's a solid 11 pages single spaced (18 double), so not too shabby. I don't know what I wrote today, since it was divided into sections, but I'd guess around 3,000. Again, it was more a matter of coming up with something to say for the last hour than than it was hurrying to finish in the allotted time, so either I'm doing something wrong or I'm doing alright.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some cashews to track down. And some cars to watch explode. And some magic to think about. Thanks for reading!