TMI

What is too much information for me to reveal??? Very little actually...I'm in trouble. It is 8pm here and I just realised I had forgotten to take my sleeping pills...so I took them, but it takes them a LONG time to work and I was up extremely early this morning. I am a creature of habit and need a lot of sleep...when I go too long without sleep, I get very emotional and have been known to overshare those emotions in late night texts, calls, e-mails...

I woke up early this morning in pain from a raging Urinary Tract Infection. I have had them my whole life. I've been to Urologists and had painful and degrading things done to me "down there" and they have never found anything physiological wrong with my plumbing. Sometimes I just go through phases where I finish my antibiotics and two days later it's back. We lived in Miami for a couple of years and it became worse than ever. I don't know if it was the heat, the humidity...I just don't know. I didn't have a family doctor down there so I was in Urgent Care every couple of weeks. They got to know me pretty well. The doctor assigned to me (as I was a repeat customer) tried various antibiotics as well as those little red pills that coat your bladder and give you a kind of relief you have to experience to understand. The meds seemed to help as long as I was on them, but when my prescription ran out the fire crotch monster would come back in full swing. He took samples to be, what's it called when they grow the bacteria in a petri dish along with various antibiotics to see which one the bacteria will not grow towards...oh yeah, a culture. Well, my culture came back clean, none of the chosen antibiotics seemed to have any effect on my powerful bacteria that had apparently set up housekeeping in my bladder. So we did another culture, with other antibiotics, nothing. Like I said, while I was on antibiotics I did get some relief, but when I ran out it flared back up. If you have never had a UTI I am very qualified to explain it to you. You feel like your bladder is full, overfull, all the time. Then when you go to the bathroom you will get a small trickle of urine that burns like fire. That heat doesn't go away after you have emptied your bladder either, or at least not for me. It's like a solid piece of smoldering lava has been placed in your bladder and there is no possible way to get comfortable.

So the nice doctor at Urgent Care, and he really was nice, he never asked me to take my pants off, just gave me a cup and pointed me to the bathroom, sent me to a highly recommended Urologist. He said he had done all he knew to do for me. In the office of the Urologist I felt very out of place because my husband and were the only patients in the crowded waiting room under 70. But I met the Doctor and he was nice and very optimistic that he could help me...after some tests...Uh Oh. I made a follow-up appointment. I was taken into a room and told to change into a gown, "scootch down" and try to get comfortable on the paper covered bed. He had explained to me he had to take a camera UP INTO MY BLADDER THROUGH MY URETHRA to have a look around. I had already sweated through the paper on the table and it was sticking to me. I can't explain what happened over the next half hour or so, not because I have blocked the pain out, but because if I let myself I will remember every second. I will never, ever go through anything like that again without being under general anaesthesia. Dressed and back in his office he told me he had found nothing wrong, however I had an exceptionally sensitive urethra. He was not the same person I had met the first visit and seemed to blame me for either wasting his time or presenting a problem he couldn't solve, I don't know, he was very short with me and suggested a new therapy where they insert acupuncture needles into a very specific part of my foot which are then attached to electrodes that administer small shocks. I was desperate. I had been drinking nothing but water for weeks, and lots of it. So I went for the acupuncture...it really didn't seem to work for me. I've got a lot of respect for Eastern medicine and would do it again if something else came up, it just didn't seem to help my bladder.

I didn't know what to do next. The highly recommended urologist had practically thrown me out of his office with a diagnosis of a "exceptional sensitive urethra" which he seemed to believe was my fault and I was just trying to vex him.

I stocked up on boxes and boxes of AZO-Standard (the over-the-counter pain reliever for bladder problems). Then, somehow, it just went away. Maybe my own immune system had finally fought it off...I have no idea...but after months of misery, I felt normal again.

Now the UTI's rarely come back. I have only been to the doctor once in the last two years for one, but I had suffered with it for weeks and refused to go because I "didn't feel like it". But I finally could bare it no more and went, took my cup to the bathroom, collected my prescriptions and left. Easy-Peasy.

Until this morning!!! The smoldering rock had returned. My husband went to Wal-Mart to get me a couple of boxes of Azo-standard to get me through the weekend...I will go to my doctor Monday, unless I dont...But this time, THIS TIME, I KNOW what's behind it. We enjoyed way too much "adult time" this past week. Every day and twice one day...way too much, most likely my bladder is just bruised, it happens due to the proximity to the vaginal canal, and it produces the same painful symptoms. He disagrees...imagine that. He says it's because I take baths instead of showers...my whole life. The only time I took showers was when I was pregnant with Cassi and I thought it was safer somehow. But that was it. Never been, never will be a shower person. I want my bath. But this week, coincidently, when he was SO affectionate, it was my baths and not him causing my pain.

From probably inappropriate conversations with my mother-in-law, it might not get any better.

Okay, Okay, too much information, I know...but I have been up since 4:30am. I'd bet money there are some of you women who understand exactly what I am talking about. We don't discuss it in polite company, but there are other women who can relate...I just know it.