Round 3...ding ding ding

Boxing gloves...check. Face Mask...check. Excitement about fighting a third time...negative!

Sunday night and all day yesterday were my third round battles with what I thought was the stomach flu. If you remember, I had my first bout with this the day after V-Day...the second bout just a week and a half later...and then there was Sunday night and yesterday, two and a half weeks later and my third round with this junk. This one was the worst of the three. The other two I was on the mend after 6 hours or less. This time...about 20 hours. My bed was on the bathroom floor Sunday night, and it got so bad that if I even slightly moved, it would set off another wave. At one point, my husband was in checking on me...probably around 4AM or so...and after an extremely nasty few minutes of hugging the toilet, I just sat back and started sobbing. He just let me lay back against him and rubbed my back as I cried, unable to catch my breath from the few minutes before. We had talked some the night before and after agreeing that we would make me a doctor's appt. for our family doctor the next morning and find out what was going on. There was no rhyme or reason for me to get the stomach flu 3 times in a month and none of my family members getting even a touch of it. So that we did. The appointment was set for 9:40AM...only 9AM came and I still was so sick that when I moved positions, it set me off again. So we changed it to a 2:00 appointment hoping that by then I would not be so sick and could actually make it to the appointment.

So 2:00, and still being somewhat sick at this point, I get up to go make myself look like I hadn't just thrown up my entire set of body organs and had him drive me to the doc. Zoe was with us, so I suggested that Darin take her with him to Walmart to kill some time since a simple appt. can take over an hour. I dragged myself in and waddled to the front to sign in. As if that weren't enough to turn people's heads my way, add to that the lovely trashcan filled with walmart sacks. Talk about embarrassing! People were sympathetic looking until they saw the "puke bucket" and then their bodies reacted the way it would if they'd seen a rat. Ugh.. So I made it in and shared my last month with the doctor. I watched as his face scrunched up at the end and listened as he said, "I"m worried...I mean a little concerned mwa mwa mwa. And instantly, I wasn't listening to my doctor, but to Charlie Brown's teacher. I did catch somewhere in there that he mentioned something about the possibility of my one and only kidney being overloaded and not functioning properly. So they took blood and a pee sample and I sat for 45 minutes or so until they got the results. As they took me back to the room, I fully expected to be informed that I would now need dialysis for a time period. But instead, the doctor came in grinning ear to ear. I know this guy really well (we played on a softball team together last summer), so I knew instantly two things. 1. It wasn't anything serious. 2. He was beyond concerned the hour before.

So what was it??? A UTI! ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!!!! He went on to show me the blood workup results and explained the numbers as he went along. All numbers related to liver and kidney function were perfect and well w/in the normal range. So no stress on the kidney or liver. Then he showed me the number of white blood cells in my bladder...a whopping # 2500% higher than it should have been. Instead of there being the normal 2-3 white blood cells there, there were 25-30. So what does that indicate?? A severe UTI. He must have seen the mix of relief and confusion on my face b/c he went on to explain that symptoms show themselves differently for women who are pregnant or elderly...often in severe bouts of vomiting..and well, the other as well. A preggo woman can't exactly judge the constant need to pee as anything other than their child putting pressure on the bladder. So that's it folks! That's why I've thought I'd had the stomach flu three times in a row! Ugh...but so relieved that it's not something more serious than that. That's why I've deprived my unborn child three different times of the nutrients he needed.

I'm on some powerful antibiotics to kill the infection and am feeling 85-90% better...just weak from depriving myself of nutrients for 24 hours. Phew! Glad that's over!!!!