Livin' Under That Dark Gray Cloud...

Sometimes people have the tendency to become complacent with the mundaneness of everyday life. Doing the same thing with little or no change day in and day out. The only difference being (for the most part) is the date and what day it is. Usually the only real change comes when the weekend rolls around. That is until something out of the ordinary happens. If you have been a semi-regular here at our little blogoshpere you'd know that with a few exceptions, rarely does any good change come our way... it does happen, but they're seemingly few and far between indeed.

For this we have to go back to Saturday. It turns out that Emmah is having trouble going, as in to the bathroom. No, she knows where it is and how to get there... it's once she arrives the trouble starts. I feel the need... the need to pee. Feels like she has to go, but very little happens and then she's right back there in 20 minutes or so.

Rewind to summer of 2006 and you begin to think, "oh no, here we go again" "this is somewhat reminiscent of something else" and you start to get that sinking feeling that the meter is expiring and dammit we're out of change!

"So... Emmah... anything else bothering you, any pain anywhere?"

"No"

Okay then, I guess we start keeping tabs on this and see how and where this goes. Saturday night, she's complaining that she's tired and she doesn't want to go to horse lessons in the morning. The reason is two-fold in that she's become disenchanted with it as it's not exactly what she thought, and two... she's really tired. So I told her to call and let them know before it got much later. She did and came back saying that she was going to go... see she had only two lessons left, one now, and wants to finish it. So we went.

On the way home, she's really tired and takes a nap. The urges remain the same with the same results. So I decide to keep her home Monday and give her the chance to sleep in. She's been busy with school and she's in jazz band and all-city band and goes in early two days a week and stays late on another. She continually dilly dallies getting ready for bed and ends up going to bed later than the 8:30 that we shoot for. I figured a day to sleep in and catch up wouldn't hurt... so I called her in. Things continued much the same for her on Monday too 'cept now she tells me that she's experiencing some pain. My heart sank to the bottoms of my feet.

It's funny that, for the most part, we always assume the worst. We always go to that dark corner of our mind where we never turn on the light. While this may come as no surprise to anyone... I don't even have a bulb in there.

"How long has it been bothering you and where does it hurt?"

"Since Saturday and right here."

She points to the bladder/pubic area.

"You know Emmah, this is a vital piece of information."

She was showing classic signs of a UTI with the urges and with what the outcome was... 'cept there was no pain (until now) and no fever to indicate an infection. Without the fever and with the pain as it was, was making things in my mind worse. I was really hoping for a damn fever!

Keep thinking positive... right? Don't assume the worst... right? Don't panic... right?

Yeah... right!

So just for kicks, I asked her to take her temperature... 99.1. Not overly over the norm, but higher than it should be. She took it a little later on... 100.7 Ahhh, now we're getting somewhere. Then there was back and side pain. Another major uh-oh in our minds. So we put in a call to Dr. Mike and he said sounds like a UTI to him... let's get her in and have some labs run. That's what we did, he sent the referral to the hospital today and Julie took her in, he also added that he wanted the results 'stat'.

Okay, she pees in a cup and they tell Julie that they should have the results back to the doctor in three hours. That puts us somewhere between 3-4:00. Seeing her this way brought out some feelings that I hoped I could keep buried away in that dark corner... the one without the bulb. I swear, as the day wore on, I could hear every tick of the second hand. Four o'clock comes and goes... why hasn't anyone called? They said that they would call with the results one way or the other.

5:00

6:00

Then as every time the phone would ring, I swear my heart skipped a beat... then it wouldn't be them. What the hell are they doing? Why don't they call back? Is the answer THAT bad?

6:30

Then finally... 6:37... it's Dr. Mike's office.

The labs showed a positive for a UTI.

WHEW!!

I laughed with the nurse saying I don't imagine that you get too many parents that are happy to hear that their daughter has a UTI. I figure that most people go oh no... and here we are going thank God. We had a pretty good laugh about it and she concurred in that she can't think of a time that anyone was happy to hear that it was only a UTI. So a prescription was sent and she's on some antibiotics now... hopefully that will be the last of it... hopefully.

KEIYTAP