Monday, June 3, 2013

A Perfectly Poignant Post About Pee

Sometimes my mouth opens and words fall out and I hear myself saying Why? Why did you just say that? Stop talking! So I laugh nervously when whoever I'm talking to laughs awkwardly at whatever I've just said. Instead of shutting up and suffering in silence while they forget whatever weird words I've just spoken, I keep talking thinking I can smooth it over with more words. My mouth opens and I utter more ridiculousness while my brain screams STOP TALKING RIGHT NOW! YOU'RE MAKING IT WORSE!

Well I just told my boss that going to the bathroom was an important part of my day.

It happened because we were both awkwardly walking from the office to the bathrooms in the hallway at the same time. They're right next to each other and there's really no way to avoid the fact that you're essentially going to the bathroom together if you happen to go at the same time as someone else. It's just weird and I generally try to avoid this but somehow I managed to end up in the hall, headed to the bathrooms with my boss anyway. Of course, small talk is required else you seem odd for avoiding someone you know who is two feet away from you.

He had forgotten he had to go to the restroom earlier and told me this. I replied with a cheesy remark, something along the lines of, "Man I hate it when that happens. Peeing is important." Which was a really weird thing to say to your boss. So he made some awkward remark back and instead of just shutting my mouth, I felt I needed to explain why I said peeing was important (aside from, you know, having your bladder explode if you don't) and that's when I announced proudly that the bathroom was an important part of my day. At this point, I stopped talking. He offered to unlock the bathroom door for me. I silently declined by holding up my own key and stepped into the Women's Room.

The reason the bathroom is an important part of my day is because I visit it frequently. I drink about a metric ton of water every day and as a result, I pee a lot. If I couldn't visit the bathroom, I would be in trouble. After partially explaining this to my boss on the way to the bathroom (in which I left out the why the bathroom is important and couldn't figure out a proper way to include it because that's not information a boss ever needs to have and ended up just being weird) I realized that even if I don't drink a metric ton of water in a day and I only drink a metric yard of water (if that's even a thing), I still go pee a lot. I have a tiny tank.

What I want to know is how many pees a day is too many pees a day?

I have turned to Google and typed in the dreaded phrase "Frequent Urination in Women." I hate Googling symptoms because A) if you're a woman, it seems every symptom in the world means you're pregnant and that will solve everything and B) I leave the computer every time thinking I have some form of cancer, a terminal illness, or a rare and tropical disease and I'm going to have to be poked and prodded in places I didn't know could be prodded or poked in order to find out what's the matter.

And of course, this search hasn't let me down. Web MD says that typically a person goes to the bathroom four to eight times a day. It also says that peeing more than that means any of the following could be the cause: I have diabetes; I'm pregnant; I have an enlarged prostate; I have Interstitial cystitis; high blood pressure medications are messing with my fluids;  a stroke damaged my nerves; I have bladder cancer or dysfunction; I have Overactive Bladder Syndrome; and on and on.

Well. I feel better. Not.

I don't think I pee more than eight times a day. I'll have to start a tally to make sure. But of course now I have to click on all of these other problems and make sure that I don't have any symptoms, which, I'm sure I will because every medical issue I look up has about a billion generic "symptoms."

I have had a tiny tank all my life so I can cross off pregnancy. Peeing doesn't hurt me, so I can cross off cancer, a Urinary Tract Infection, and cysts. I don't think I have diabetes. Apparently if I had OBS, I'd leak pee when I laughed--and I don't. People with Interstitial cystitis pee up to 60 times in 24 hours and I definitely do NOT pee anywhere near that frequently. I've never had a stroke. I am not currently, nor have I ever been, in possession of a prostate so I can assume an enlarged one is not the cause. I've never had radiation therapy so that can't be it. I've had my thyroid checked before so that's not it. I don't have high blood pressure, let alone medication for it...

Maybe I just drink too much water. Maybe I just have a small bladder. Maybe I'm not abnormal--aside from writing an entire post about peeing.

Starting today I will keep "The Water Journal--a Documentation of Going In and Going Out." You know, just to be sure.

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