Try This

As I've written several time in this blog, we have a pretty steady routine going with the thrice-weekly dialysis treatments and the every two-month leukemia maintenance treatments. Throw work in to the mix and the once a month trip back to the Quad Cities area to visit family, and we have a pretty full life.

But, just when you think you're dealing with all you can deal with at one time, up pops another little gift. A gift that serves to remind us that we have the capacity to handle much more than we do in our day to day lives.

My reminder was a UTI, and no, that's not the University of Texas International! Okay, there's probably not such a place, but we're only a few days from the start of another college football season.

It's easier to joke about the UTI (seriously, it's a urinary tract infection) today, because I'm taking medicine to get it taken care of. I don't think I could've written with as much jocularity a couple of weeks ago.

I first became acquainted with the UTI on August 14. I was running in the morning, and it seemed like the more I ran, the more it felt like I needed to go to the bathroom. I ended up walking for most of my outing that morning. I hit the bathroom as soon as I got home, and that's when I noticed the lovely burning sensation and a hint of blood in my urine.

Naturally, I did what everyone does in these situations. I went to the internet to get my medical advice. From what I could tell, I didn't have the symptoms for kidney stones, so I went with the UTI. I wasn't freaking out about it, although I didn't care much for the pain I felt each time I used the bathroom. I figured I would call Dr. Frock the next morning and he would be able to prescribe something for me.

What I didn't count on was that Dr. Frock was in Red Oak, Iowa seeing patients. Surely, if I asked the girl that answered the phone in his office to get a message to him, he would call me back, right? Wrong. I didn't hear from him Monday, so when I went to dialysis Tuesday, I asked Angie, my nurse, to give him a call. She reached him right away, and he prescribed Bactrim, once a day for five days. If that didn't do the trick, he wanted me to call a urologist.

I picked up my Bactrim Tuesday and took it as prescribed. The only thing that seemed to get better was that the blood in my urine went away. Otherwise, I still had as much, if not more, pain. So, on Monday, I called the urologist. The soonest I could get an appointment was Friday, so this was going to be a long week of pain.

On Friday I journeyed to the urologist's office, where I got blood drawn from my arm by the nurse, and a surprise prostate exam from the doctor! Dr. Konigsberg prescribed Cipro, twice a day for 10 days. Since starting on this Friday evening, I'm just about pain free.

To be on the safe side, I need to go back in a couple weeks for a follow-up visit, which is going to include a couple procedures. One test will be a CT scan, but the other one is going to be a cystoscopy. He didn't call it that. No, Dr. Konigsberg just told me that they were going to look inside my bladder to make sure everything was okay. Again, using the internet as my source, it sounds like this involves needles going in through places that have never been stuck before. Bogus!

Dr. Frock had tipped me off to this in his monthly visit last week. He said it hurts, but he reassured me I've had worse pain. I'm not sure I buy that!

I'm waiting now for the scheduler to call me to set up the appointment for this day of fun. I expect I'll hear from them today to get a date.

The moral of this story? Don't think it can never get worse, because it always can. At the same time, we're never given anything we can't handle, so like everything that's come before this latest adventure, we make the adjustments and get it taken care of.

The pain associated with the UTI, and the discomfort that follows once you're out of the bathroom, has kept me on the sidelines with my exercise. This afternoon, I'm going to try and work out. If that goes well, I'll run this evening while Jeannie walks. It will feel good to get back to moving again.