I went to the doctor & guess what he told me

I have no filter, so I’ll dive straight in …

Despite two days on antibiotics, I was still feeling pretty crap on Friday afternoon, so I went to the doctor about my UTI.

I couldn’t go to our regular medical practice because the youngest has permanent hijacked my car. I had to make a booking at a local GP instead.

I was given an appointment with a bloke who I Googled afterwards and discovered has “a particular interest in disease of the urinary tract, hypertension and management of chronic kidney diseases and end-stage renal failure”.

Fortunately I don’t have end-stage renal failure, but you’d have thought his particular interest in disease of the urinary tract would have been useful.

Unfortunately he said there wasn’t much to be done and that women at my age are prone to these sort of problems and they usually clear up of their own accord.

(I don’t have medical training, but that has not been my layman’s experience.)

He sent me to the bathroom with a little jar to get a mid-stream wee sample.

I am very bad at getting mid-stream wee samples into little jars and always end up getting mid-stream wee fingers instead. After thoroughly washing both my hands and the outside of the little jar, I walked back into the corridor and discovered 10 closed examination doors, none of them with names on them.

Cue mild panic.

The receptionist was on the phone, so I started pacing around in increasing agitation with my jar of wee.

Eventually the doctor came looking for me … and that’s how a standard consultation turned into a long one.

Anyways, he reckons the antibiotics I’ve been taking are really strong and I shouldn’t have drunk 40 million cocktails at Hickson Rd Distillery last Thursday night.

Upon reflection, I’m not sure whether those two opinions are related. At first I thought he was referring to gin and antibiotics being a bad combination, but maybe he meant UTIs and gin don’t mix?

Anyways, his $160 worth of advice was to drink lots of Ural and cranberry juice and be patient.

I am not a patient person and I like to get my money’s worth, so I confessed to him that I hadn’t done my last two bowel cancer screening tests and he gave me a new one.

I promised I’d do it this time!

I also told him I was due for my 5-year pap smear and he handed me a plastic bag with a giant cotton bud in it and told me it was DIY these days.

I am so out of the loop.

So this week’s job is to poke my poo and my cervix with sticks and send them off for testing.

Joy.

Oh and speaking of Hickson Rd Distillery, they sent me some pics from the event, in case you fancy a stickybeak.

I’ve also published a story on Drinks Digest about it that you can read here.

As for my weekend, I decided not to follow the doctor’s advice and finished the course of antibiotics.

They haven’t helped and have no doubt brutally murdered all my good bacteria while not destroying the bad, so I’ve been hoovering down probiotics in the hope of staving off additional medical conditions.

Saturday passed in a blur. A walk with friends, grocery shopping, housework, an astronomically expensive trip to the vet for Charlie’s annual injection, an astronomically expensive trip to the hairdresser to get the youngest a trim, a visit to my sister, some freelance work, lots of mad dashes to the loo.

Then on Sunday I drove to Newcastle to see a Eurogliders gig at Lizotte’s.

But I’ve already waffled too much for one blog post, so I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

How was your weekend?

Song of the day: Sinead O’Connor “Nothing compares 2 U”