“You’re supposed to be that indestructible force in whom I can always be confident will never slow down. What’s going on with the blood in the urine thing?”
My good friend Henry, a regular reader of the blog, was appalled to find the chink in my armor. I explained the situation and assured him that though I likely had some issue that would kill a mere mortal, I would survive the storm with something akin to a Band-Aid.
I finally got a hold of the doctor’s office and they quickly scheduled an appointment for me to see my Urologist later in the day. I arrived at that appointment and gave them the obligatory urine sample. They did not want to see the one I’d been carting around since Sunday in the back of my car. What a waste of a perfectly good, and bloody, urine sample.
Doctor Luria walked in the office with an assistant and introduced himself.
“Have we seen each other before?” he asked.
“The last time I saw you, you were yanking a tube out of my penis and causing me pain that made me want to hurl all over you…but no hard feelings, doc,” I replied.
He smiled and then asked me to bend over and pull down my pants where upon he stuck his gloved finger where the sun doesn’t shine and announced, “prostate is good.”
This man hates me.
“Did you have any pain while passing the bloody urine,” he asked.
“Nope,” I said, assuming this was a good thing.
“Okay…let’s order a CAT scan and a scoping of the urinary tract,” he said to his assistant.
Clearly I’d pissed him off and he was going to cause me more pain. I countered…
“If I’d have said it hurt like hell when I’d peed would you not have ordered those tests? Because I can change my answer right now…”
He explained that since I hadn’t had any pain, that I likely hadn’t had a kidney stone and so he wanted to see if I had some up there hiding and if I might have bleeding polyps, too.
“I know there are some leftover kidney stones because you told me when you took out the last one. You said they might stay up there forever and not cause me any problems. Let’s not go back up in there and start them moving again,” I said, using all of my medical courses and operating experience to convince him of the foolishness of his plan.
Again, he smiled and ordered the tests. He did not seem to value my expert council in the least.
So…I’m scheduled for both tests next week. I went home and hiked my four-mile loop, reaching the last mile, which follows the Towpath, just as Miggie called to say she was dropping her mother off and was heading home. It was a little after seven and I was walking in the dark.
“How about I walk into Peninsula and meet you at Fisher’s. It is rib night, after all,” I said.
“You want to walk all the way there in the dark? Won’t you be scared?” she said.
I’d already told her how I’d heard a lone coyote howling near the trail I’d been following along the mostly deserted road I hiked. I may have said ‘timber wolf’ though when I’d told her.
“Why not? I feel great and we both know I’m indestructible and that there’s nothing on the trails scarier than me,” I replied.
I hiked into town over the next hour making it a seven-mile hike and getting over 24,000 steps in the process. By the time I laid down in bed to call it a day, I will admit that my feet were feeling every one of those steps.
Hike: Two hours.
Training Heart Rate: 75 bpm.
Calories burned: 700.
Bonus: 24,000 steps.
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