My body feels like it's rotting from the inside out. I made the stupid decision not to take Ambien last night because, "Oh, I'm already taking enough drugs, and I don't want to get hooked on it."
SCREW. THAT.
I can worry about an Ambien addiction after chemo. Because right now, I need my sleep. I was really kicking myself last night, in my lack-of-Ambien-induced state. HOW COULD I BE SO STUPID?
And now to talk about urine. Yes, P-E-E. And I'm not going to leave out any details.
Yesterday around 4:00pm or 4:30pm I went to the bathroom and noticed it burned a little. When I "cleaned myself up," I noticed there may have been a trace of blood in my urine, but I couldn't tell; so as Trevor and I were driving home, I called the consulting nurse and she instructed us that we were going to have to turn around and go straight to Urgent Care. FANtastic.
When we got there, I checked in, and got a mask from the front desk. The consulting nurse said it was IMPERATIVE that I get a mask. Like I might DIE if I DID NOT LOOK LIKE A PAINTER while sitting in the Urgent Care waiting room. Trevor made sure it was secure by squeezing the little metal tab on my nose. Thanks, babe.
(By the way, we were the only people there, so no one else got to witness my baby blue Darth Vader-ness.)
My name was called and we went and waited in an exam room (blood pressure and temp taken, yadda, yadda, yadda). I told the nurse I had just peed an hour ago and that I was going to need some "assistance," so he brought me a HUGE flimsy pink plastic pitcher of water and a cup.
Trevor and I looked around the room but unfortunately couldn't locate a beer bong, so I had to just chug it straight from the cup. Too bad.
We sat awhile - me incredibly uncomfortable with my water-logged stomach - and waited until I had to, how do you say... "go."
It is here that I would write an incredibly lame dialogue of the phone ringing and having the nurse tell me it's for me, that it's nature calling, but I'll spare you.
If you have never peed in a cup before, I will tell you it's quite a process. Well, not so much for guys, I suppose, since they're so... external... but it's a process nonetheless. Especially when you're wearing a cute yellow summer dress. Hey, at least it was yellow...
Whenever I've peed in a cup in the past, I've always been given "special" wipes (You know. OBSTETRIC wipes. Just to sound smarter.). At this Urgent Care, however, I was given the regular bag with the cup inside - and a PILE OF GAUZE. Little gauze pads that I was supposed to wet under the faucet instead of the OBSTETRIC wipes. Needless to say, I just didn't feel as "clean" as I probably should have.
Now, the actual peeing into the cup is complicated, too, because you can't simply start peeing into the cup. OH, NO. You have to start peeing and THEN catch the stream because you want a "clean" sample (which I don't quite understand because aren't they looking for an infection anyway?). The pee almost always ends up on your hands, and that's just unpleasant. I always have paper towels and more OBSTETRIC wipes at the ready, laid out in a nice, obsessive-compulsive order on the oh-so-sanitary floor, or a nearby metal shelf (if I'm lucky).
THIS time, I only had my stupid PILE OF GAUZE. Luckily I had thought ahead of time and saved some for this post-peeing procedure, and didn't use them all up during the pre-peeing procedure of CLEANING MY NETHER REGIONS. Despite the word OBSTETRIC, I really missed those wipes.
I got all "reorganized," and handed off my bag o' pee to the nurse who took it off to some super-secret lab to get tested. Oh yeah, and it was warm. Nice.
After waiting in the room for another half hour (after getting my blood drawn from a nice guy who said his nickname was "Bong" because his initials were P-O-T), the PA came in and said my pee was clean and that we had to get out because they needed the room for people who were actually sick. Hel-LO? CANCER?
Just kidding. She was actually really nice.
After dinner at Trevor's parents' house, he dropped me off at home so I could go to sleep and he went out with the guys. I got online for a little bit, checked my email, and found I had one from my health insurance's online service saying I had new lab results. I went to the website and found something COMPLETELY different than results for a bladder infection:
"Pregnancy Urine - NEGATIVE"
Now, I was a little confused... Sure I was happy it was negative (again), but I definitely hadn't asked them to do a pregnancy test, and there was nothing there regarding a UTI, so I was worried they had just switched tests on someone - and THAT someone is really confused because they're stomach is sticking out to *here* and they're being told they have a bladder infection, not that they're pregnant.
I called the consulting nurse this morning and she thought it was HILARIOUS. But luckily, she also told me that they had, in fact, performed a proper urinalysis and that I did not have any infection. Phew. Clean pee. I sound like a relieved druggie. :o)
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