CAKE FOR BREAKFAST: don't eat the peaches
I am back from something of a five-day staycation at this very chic bed and breakfast called The Hospital. Their robes were backward and the room had a bed that only fit one person, but at least there was a little bucket in the toilet to catch all my pee. The staff took very good care of me and I hope I never have to see them again.
SOMETHING I ATE WITH MY MOUTH Hospital food has a reputation that it does and does not deserve. I had chicken that was kind of delicious and pasta that was not, but bad pasta is better than no pasta IMO. If you stick to the grapes and crackers, you're safe, which is good because that was all I really felt like eating. Forewarning: if you don't like body/hospital/blood talk, this might not be the newsletter for you. Totally understand. Come back next week, when I'll return to talking about frosting in a can and how, on Bachelor in Paradise, Cam has, as Riley put it, "strong youth pastor vibes" and how, as Riley also put it, "Clay's body looks like it's going to beat up his voice."
I had what I eventually learned was the world's worst UTI. It skipped my bladder and went straight to my kidneys. So, I didn't have any of the usual, fun symptoms (feels like you have to pee constantly, burns in a vengeful way when you do pee). Instead, I had different, fun symptoms like terrible abdominal pain and blood in my pee. It started with stomach cramps that felt like period cramps which made me like "hmm probably just residual cramps from my period last week." In a day, that turned into cramps just on the right side of my stomach so I was like "hmm that's where my appendix is which is...suspicious." Later that night, that turned into "hi hello Riley we need to go to the ER because the pain is bad and there is blood in my pee, a place, as you know, where there should not be blood."
The ER at midnight is a sad and scary and sometimes unsettlingly calm place. Would not recommend. Unless you are quite literally about to die, you're just hanging out in the waiting room, trying not to freak out about the thing that brought you to a place with "emergency" in its title, hoping a nurse will come out and call your name soon. I handed the check-in nurses a bright red urine sample and they said, "Okay, thank you. We'll let you know when a bed is ready." If they barely batted an eye at a cup of blood-pee, I cannot imagine the things they've seen.
After about 75 minutes, we got called back to a room. It was a lot of peeing in cups, waiting, having blood drawn, waiting, saying "no I don't have my period" and "yes I'm sure the blood in the cup isn't my period," explaining where it hurt a dozen times to a dozen different people, saying "no I don't get UTIs frequently or even ever really" and "yes I'm sure," and did I mention waiting? They thought I had kidney stones, but the CT scan turned up clear and the nurse sifting through my piss like a 49er never struck gold. (Did you know that medical speak for pissing is "voiding"? One of the charge nurses asked if I'd "voided" recently and I was like, "...by myself or with a partner?")
They gave me Oxycodone for the pain but, nevertheless, my pain persisted. (Yes, we stan a fighting kween! Werk, kidney pain!!!). They gave me Morphine which felt ~good~ but the pain was still bad enough that I couldn't fall asleep. They tried Oxy again but my kidneys were like, "lol bitch u thought." Finally, they gave me Dilaudid, another intense painkiller, which felt ~~~good~~~ and actually let me sleep.
The bad pain was gone after about 8 hours, but they moved me from the ER to in-patient because a CT scan showed I had internal bleeding around my kidney, which was likely the cause of the bad pain. The tests also showed I had a whole family of bacteria in my pee. So, my official diagnosis was a UTI and unexplained internal bleeding which were both, admittedly, unsatisfying. Not that I wanted something worse. Spending 5 days in the hospital and coming out with "my insides are bleeding but *shrug*" and a UTI kind of sucks. In part because UTIs are so common and the pain I was experiencing was very much not. You know the main ways to prevent UTIs, if you have a vagina, are to pee after sex and wipe front to back? That's it. Hearing that from a doctor kind of makes you feel like you've been raw dogging a dirty toilet paper roll.
They kept me in the hospital to monitor a fever, but my pain and other symptoms were either gone or entirely manageable. Between napping and more napping, I had to figure out ways to stay occupied. So, in attempts to be adventurous and not subsist on grapes alone, I ordered sliced peaches for breakfast. They came in a fruit cup with that watery syrup that all fruit cups come in. I took a bite, expecting to be whisked away to a summer home in Georgia, feeling a cool breeze that didn't smell like latex and hand sanitizer. These were not those peaches.
These were what I can only describe as The Worst Peaches In The World. They were both extremely sweet and also very bitter. They were too hard and also dissolved into a mush the second they touched my tongue. They were so bad it was funny, and I did make Riley try them because that's what husbands are for. SOMETHING I MADE FOR YOU TO EAT I'm doing so, so, so much better now. Feeling good and great and still eating Bride's Cake ice cream. This was all less a cry for well wishes and more an opportunity for me to be like, "Sorry if I missed your call last week I was ~*incapacitated*~" in a very MidAtlantic voice.
Anyway, I wrote this timeline of important moments in #feminist history that was published on The Lily. Fun fact: this was a piece cut from my book (!) which I've turned in the edits for (!!) and have been basking in the glory of having finished a book (!!!). Think of it as an aperitif before my big book meal.
Stay hungry and healthy, lil bb.
Mia