While I have been going through life figuring out how we will survive the next year on way less income with way more bills, I've had those symptoms that made me think I had an enlarged prostate. I didn't really want to spend more money or time going to the doctor who would prescribe medication I already had from some other infection. No need to lecture me, I know. But I have google and it's the best doctor ever. My symptoms started to go away and then I got other symptoms that happen after using antibiotics. My sudden urge to pee was replaced with a sudden urge to find ice to sit on. Luckily, I had antibiotics for that, too. To be extra safe I kept drinking the cranberry juice and taking the cranberry tablets and staying as far away from anything that even rhymed with yeast. I didn't even make right turns while driving if that direction was was east.
I was feeling better and had not spent too much on curing myself. Whew.
Then I woke up with throbbing lower back and side pain and I was done. I gave up my Starbucks budget and went to the doctor. When I got there, the nurse handed me a cup and asked for a urine sample. The cup was really small and had an odd gnome-shaped lid on it. The bathroom was really big but had NO COUNTERS in it or any place to set the lid or the cup down. There wasn't even a hook on the door to hang something on. I had taken my jacket off in the exam room but was still wearing my scarf with my t-shirt and jeans. So- small cup, long scarf, nowhere to put anything. And this wasn't even a gas station bathroom! After the last 2 years of taking photos in bathrooms, this was going to be one of my biggest challenges. I got the lid off the cup and held it and my scarf in one hand while I got the sample. But then, the little cup got full fast and I didn't want to pee all over my hand so I set it down next to the toilet, far from my feet and my scarf. And my jeans. And my shoes. And even though the full sample cup was far from my feet, somehow when I got up to flush, I knocked the cup over. My left hand grabbed my scarf and my right hand grabbed the cup, but there was already a puddle on the floor. There was still some pee in the cup, so I set it on the ground as far away from me as I could. I tried to clean up the puddle with crumpled toilet seat covers and one-ply toilet paper, while trying to keep my scarf dry. Of course there was no paper towel in there, only one of those air hand dryers. Oh my fucking god. I was laughing so hard. I wish I'd had my camera with me.
I handed the nurse my sample and hoped it would be enough. I told her how I spilled it in the bathroom and that they might want to clean it with something better than toilet seat covers and tap water and she just stared at me, which made me laugh even more. So I suggested they keep paper towels and Clorox spray in the bathroom for the next poor soul who kicks over her urine sample and she just kept staring at me.
The doctor gave me a new prescription to cure my kidney infection and told me to come back in 3 days if the pain is not better. If I have to go back, I am not going back. I am now the girl who peed all over the bathroom with her foot.
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